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A BETTER LIFE 

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GLIMPSES 



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A BETTER LIFE 



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BY 

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LEWIS GILBERT WILSON 



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CAMBRIDGE /^7 Vf)C 

JOHN WILSON AND SON £^ 

^ttfoersttg Press 
1892 



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Copyright, i8g2, 
By John Wilson and Son. 




TO 



Wqz Jflemorg of @ur 3Ltttle Bog, 

Who, having entered in by the gates into the city, has left 
us great assurances, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Vaster Life 9 

II. The Teachings of Infancy ... 15 

III. Adieu to Eden 25 

IV. How shall I Live ? 32 

V. Calling Back 37 

VI. The Loneliness of Progress . . 41 

VII. The Guardianship of God ... 48 

VIII. Man's Knowledge of God ... 56 

IX. Man's Prayer to God 62 

X. God's Prayer to Man 71 

XI. Man's Anxiety 76 

XII. Up and Onward 83 

XIII. Duty 88 

XIV. The Kingdom Coming 101 

XV. Truth : Transient and Permanent 106 

XVI. Man's Stewardship 116 

XVII. The Divine Integrity 122 

XVIII. The Inevitable Faith 125 

XIX. The Eden of the Soul .... 129 



Our life itself, in its countless mazes, in the bitter 
and sweet of its experience, in its depths of emotion 
and lifts of thought ; the imagination, nourished and 
enriched by all we have felt and thought and seen and 
known ; the soul, with such wealth of capacity and mas- 
tery of passion as it may have won, — this must, after 
all, make for every man the mirror, which at every 
point reflects some different aspect of the universe, and 
at every turn does something to brighten or deepen the 
picture that images to us the Universal Life. To a 
mind religiously trained that picture is what we call 
" the thought of God." 

J. H. Allen (Positive Religion). 



GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE VASTER LIFE. 
I. 

r I MIE one subject of paramount interest to 
-*■ the human soul is Life. Infancy, ad- 
olescence, maturity, and the myriad mysteries 
therein involved, are always new to the in- 
dividual student. As every one of the earth's 
countless inhabitants is the heir of the whole 
of Time, so the whole of life is the natural 
dower of each sentient creature. He may fail 
to grasp it, he may grasp and then squander 
or bury it ; but it is his nevertheless, by nat- 
ural right. As the atmosphere to man's 
lungs, so is life to his soul, — with this differ- 
ence however, that whereas the atmosphere 



10 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

envelops this particular globe on which we 
dwell, life is the element of, and is coexten- 
sive with, the universe. Little systems have 
been marked out by the intellect which in- 
cluded the phenomena and essence of this 
sphere only ; but a new conception — of a 
vast federation of peopled planets — is just 
finding its way into the day-dreams of 
humanity. 

" There is no end to God's 
Domain of suns, and systems ruled by suns, — 
No end and no beginning through all space ; 
But everlasting, mystic, wonderful, 
The song of us sounds ever round the throne 
Of Him who reigns supreme, the Life of all." 

And yet this expansion of the field of 
thought increases rather than diminishes the 
enigmas of pain and joy and triumph. The 
momentous questions which arise in the pres- 
ence of birth, youth, age, and death are in no 
final sense answered in the widened ranges of 
man's intellectual advancement. Still, as in 
the earliest days, he is caught in the colossal 



THE VASTER LIFE. 11 

flash-light, and knows not the character of 
the darkness which follows, or seems to fol- 
low. One truth alone evermore appeals to him 
for acceptance, — 'that he is a part of a vaster 
scheme of things than he had ever previously 
imagined. Wider and higher and deeper the 
realm extends on every side, with every new 
discovery man makes ; and, therefore, more 
and more valid becomes to his mental life 
that true faith which is " the conviction of 
things not seen." Whatever then can in any 
way impart or increase that faith within his 
restless, inquiring, longing spirit should find 
its way to the world. 

II. 

The conception of Eden is native to the 
individual. It is the result of his backward 
gaze from the trials, pitfalls, disappointments, 
and sins of after-life to the innocent charms 
of childhood and youth. Now that they have 
passed away, the early days rise up to fill the 
human heart with the sweet anguish of de- 



12 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

parted joys. All there is, or ever was, or 
ever could be, in the legends of Eden is 
suggested here, — 

" Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fresh, and fair ; 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae weary, fu' o' care ? 
Thou 'It break my heart, thou warbling bird, 

That wantons through the flowering thorn ; 
Thou minds me o' departed joys, 

Departed — never to return ! ' ' 

Such a sense of a bright and beautiful past, 
hidden now behind clouds of varied experi- 
ence, could alone have been the inspiration of 
Faust, — the poem of poems, — 

" Give me, oh, give me back the days 

When I — I too — was young, 

And felt, as they now feel, each coming hour 

New consciousness of power. 

Oh, happy, happy time, above all praise ! 

Then thoughts on thoughts and crowding fancies sprung, 

And found a language in unbidden lays, 

Unintermitted streams from fountains ever flowing. 

Then, as I wandered free, 

In every field for me 



THE VASTER LIFE. 13 

Its thousand flowers were blowing 1 

A veil through which I did not see, 

A thin veil o'er the world was thrown 

In every bud a mystery ; 

Magic in everything unknown. 

The fields, the grove, the air was haunted, 

And all that age has disenchanted. 

Yes ! give me, give me back the days of youth, 

Poor, yet how rich ! — my glad inheritance 

The inexhaustible love of truth, 

While life's realities were all romance — 

Give me, oh, give youth's passions unconfined, 

The rush of joy that felt almost like pain, 

Its hate, its love, its own tumultuous mind ; 

Give me my youth again ! " 

Wherever the memory of the adult re- 
vives and ponders over the joys and an- 
ticipations of youth, this cry for the early 
days breaks forth. Opportunities neglected, 
hopes unrealized, prayers unanswered, barren 
attainments, and the consciousness of dead- 
ened sensibilities awaken in the human heart, 
at that moment when it enters upon the grave 
responsibilities and struggles of experience, a 
longing for the return of years which have 
forever passed away. And then, too, one be- 



14 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

gins to decipher revelations before unknown. 
The generation which treads upon the heels of 
the one to which he belongs seems all alive 
with prophetic voices, or over-written, like 
some crowded palimpsest, with the mysterious 
characters which evermore instruct mankind 
concerning what it ought to be and is not. A 
thousand influences tend toward regret, a 
thousand admonish to a higher and nobler 
career ; and it is only after long meditation, 
after superlative endeavor, after self-renuncia- 
tion and the new birth of the spirit into the 
realm of genuine faith, that the troubled soul 
finds peace. That journey is long and peril- 
ous. It begins its varied course where infancy 
teaches the character of the first Eden. In- 
fancy is prophetic, and points over the heads 
of the fathers to the kingdom of God, instruct- 
ing the fathers, and affording them, in its 
guileless purity, the incentive to labor, to 
pray, and to wait if so be they may obey 
the commands of its sinless evangels. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE TEACHINGS OF INFANCY. 
I. 

"DLESSED are the child-faces of the world ! 

-*-^ In those faces behold we the justifica- 
tion for rejoicing in the truth, bearing all 
things, believing all things, hoping all things, 
and enduring all things. They hold us to 
the essential principles of the swift world, 
and without them we should slip into the 
abyss of our own undoing. 

Whether welcome or unwelcome (and where 
unwelcome Nature blushes) they enter here 
with a cry of triumph, as of conquerors into 
a defeated realm. And with what perfect 
dignity they ascend their thrones ! They are 
the only rulers by divine right. They come 
with their own standards, with their own 



16 GLIMPSES OP A BETTER LIFE. 

methods. With as much power of uncon- 
sciousness as Napoleon possessed of self- 
consciousness, they set at nought all the 
precedents of history. You cannot bribe 
them. Silver and gold are not precious 
metals in their sight. Will not tin and brass 
do as well ? And where the " wise and pru- 
dent " might gain favor by means of title and 
lineage, they come to grace with knighthood 
the beggar and the serf. They behold feat- 
ures beneath masks, and hear the spirit and 
learn of what stuff it is, despite studied elocu- 
tion. Of all the world they can return a kiss 
for a blow. They are " of the kingdom." 

And is it not apparent that all other claims 
of royalty are based on transient founda- 
tions ? All other sovereigns are made by 
men, but these by the Eternal. All others 
are artificial, but these are natural. The earth 
whirls, that on it babes may come and reign. 
To this end the globe exists. Is not this the 
teaching of Evolution, — that civilization re- 
ceives its credentials from the cradle and is 



THE TEACHINGS OF INFANCY. 17 

made possible by the extension of the period of 
infancy ? So long as in the mollusk birth 
meant maturity, there was and could be no 
rapid upward trend. But when mothers be- 
gan to weep for their offspring, the Edens of 
life were watered, and the desert began to 
blossom as the rose. Art, industry, schools, 
colleges, and churches exist at the command 
of infancy. 

Nature seeks birth. What follows is of 
less moment. Birth is the event of the uni- 
verse. To remain here after birth is a matter 
of indifference with Nature, for there are more 
forces to destroy than to preserve the physi- 
cal creature. The great majority of all who 
are born into this world simply pass by us, 
like swift angels, or bright flashes of light, 
to the end which justifies birth. The minor- 
ity remain to make other births possible, and 
to linger through joy, pain, bereavement, anx- 
iety, and peace, until the second generation is 
well equipped for the same labors. Thus are 
the relays of life brought forth in this mys- 



18 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

terious journey of the earth from chaos to the 
Life of all. But the child-faces, what of 
them ? 

II. 

Therein is no faintest trace of sin. Such 
faces ought ever to be about us in this first 
life. " Of such is the kingdom." In those 
faces there are worlds of expression, but no 
expression of the " world." Pure, ingenuous, 
frank, and trustful, the great, saving ele- 
ments of life beam there, — shine forth from 
their bright eyes and speak from their lips un- 
defined. They are our perpetual reminders of 
faith and virtue. Parchments are they from 
which the divine message has not been erased. 
Oh, if it could be allowed to remain, or made 
to become ever more clear and full and con- 
stant ! How soon self-consciousness spreads 
its foolish, drivelling mask over features made 
in heaven! How soon vanity, and then 
through vanity, lust and the execrable records 
of guilt and folly place their characters where 



THE TEACHINGS OF INFANCY. 19 

only the shining beatitudes were meant to be 
written ! And how soon the pitiful proof- 
marks of disappointment and mental or moral 
conflict get imprinted on our facile human 
brows ! 

The frailest babe has much to teach us if 
we sit at its feet. It may not speak to us, 
but its face has many a gleam of heavenly 
wisdom, — just faint traces of a large and 
beneficent and divine revelation of the soul. 
Thus it is made to appear that — 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar : 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

Not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home. 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! " 

Because they bring inarticulate revelations 
of a loftier realm than this, we have this 
loyalty of our nature to the tyranny of 
infancy. 



20 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

III. 

Few are they who do not possess this loy- 
alty. It levels all distinctions. If it is true 
of the hovel, it is likewise true of the palace. 
To win smiles and favors from such royalty, 
the proudest will grovel. Orphan asylums 
are the first charities of all progressive peo- 
ples ; for those who have none must needs 
care for others' children, either directly or 
indirectly, at the bidding of that helplessness 
which is more potent than despotism. With 
its coming to the rudest dwelling come re- 
finements, which otherwise were impossible. 
The babe says, " Let there be health, gen- 
tility, art, religion," and they are. The 
roughest man becomes a gentleman or a 
bowing, smiling courtier in the presence of 
his new babe. And many an atheist, upon 
whom the priesthood and the Church had 
wrought in vain, has seen God and confessed 
immortality in the nursery of his own chil- 
dren. The worst of drunkards must have 



THE TEACHINGS OP INFANCY. 21 

lucid moments wherein to pray that his little 
ones may never come to his misery ; and the 
thief, that they may be able to resist tempta- 
tion. In the presence of his own daughter 
what father worthy the name would not be 
chaste and true! 

With their own patient hands parents 
make the beds, prepare the food, and with a 
love not lightly to be spoken of watch over 
their offspring. And yet they have felt that 
their children were their protectors. Safer 
with than without them ! Wherein their 
power may be man may not say, but the 
children save us when the test comes. If 
the sands rise about our feet, will not God 
and Christ and all the saints save us for the 
baby's sake ? 

Calvin had no children, else he had had less 
logic ; for the wisdom of babes and suck- 
lings outstrips, and ever will outstrip, that of 
the wise and understanding. Be their sys- 
tem never so perfect to man's discursive 
sense, if it leaves out of account any of the 



22 GLIMPSES OP A BETTER LIFE. 

mysterious forces that bind fathers, mothers, 
and babes, it must fall. Men could ever pop- 
ulate hell with other people's children, but 
never seriously with their own. Thus it is 
that childhood reverses and subdues the de- 
crees of the wise, setting at nought the 
judgments of men, and revealing, in spite 
of our self-imposed blindness, glimpses of a 
better life. And what of childlikeness ? 

IV. 

All true insight urges man to preserve it 
as the precious jewel of life, — to cherish, 
reverence, and transmit it as the legacy 
of the past, and the promise of a future 
heaven. It is the chief gift, next to life 
itself, of the Father's hand. To wear it is 
to brighten, cheer, emancipate, and exalt the 
world ! Where is sadness and shame except 
where that jewel is injured or lost ? Where 
is kingly strength except where it is retained, 
in all its pristine beauty ? Is it not the tal- 
isman of virtue ? Where it disappears there 



THE TEACHINGS OF INFANCY. 23 

Art seeks to make up for what is lost. Then 
comes the imitation, where the original was 
meant to be, — the ghastly makeshift! No 
decorations, no gems, no beautiful fabric ; 
no grace or movement of head or hand, no 
posture nor attitude of feature, can put back 
into the human eye what is lost with the loss 
of innocence. All garniture fails here ; the 
schools fail here ; society miserably fails 
here. Here all the charms of art only make 
more pitiful the absence of the charms of 
nature. If only men and women could pre- 
serve unimpaired what trouble and care and 
temptation and sin so often rob them of, 
they might exclaim, " I am a king ; to this 
end have I been born, and to this end am I 
come into the world, that I should bear wit- 
ness unto the truth : " and if there were not 
on all our faces the scars of moral burning 
— traces of defeated manhood and woman- 
hood — even demons would see and hear. 
Blessed children! 



24 GLIMPSES OP A BETTER LIFE. 

"We need love's tender lessons, taught 
As only weakness can ; 
God hath his small interpreters, 
The child must teach the man. 

The haughty eye shall seek in vain 

What innocence beholds ; 
No cunning finds the key of heaven, 

No strength its gates unfolds. 

Alone to guilelessness and love 

That gate shall open fall ; 
The mind of pride is nothingness, 

The childlike heart is all." 

We support them in the world, prepare 
them to meet and endure the world, protect 
them for a time from the world; but they 
teach and prepare us for the kingdom of God ! 

But when childhood and innocence have 
fallen from us like the leaves of a summer 
past, what then ? Are there still some 
glimpses of a better life ? 



CHAPTER III. 



ADIEU TO EDEN. 



I. 

"N TOTHING in the world can lend terror 
■*■ ^ to the soul which sees through the 
shadows the divine realities. We cannot 
compromise with law, but we may get greater 
peace by observing aiid obeying law. The 
Past is forever guarded by a flaming sword, 
which turns every way to prevent our entrance 
again into its innocence and joy. And it is 
well, therefore, that we learn, at the earliest 
possible hour of life, that if fleet Time and 
reckless Fate drive us from one Eden, it is 
that we may, by grasping the better condi- 
tions of life as we are borne in its current, 
find even a nobler Paradise. Our first birth 
is into a world of innocence, of helpless love ; 
of a nameless enjoyment of birds and flowers 



26 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

and bright streams, and forests and fruits. 
That Eden passes away. Let a simple rem- 
iniscence stand for the day and hour when 
childhood ceased, and the struggle up the 
hard highway of mortality began. 

II. 

Near the dear old home there arose a long 
line of peaceful, happy hills. They bounded 
the horizon at the north and northeast. With 
green foliage were they covered in the spring 
and early summer ; with dreamy haze in late 
summer and early autumn ; with hues from 
scarlet to brightest yellow in autumn ; in 
pure, cold white in winter. On their sides 
the cattle fed over patches of pasture-land, 
and here and there great bowlders lay always 
like huge, sleeping elephants. To my child- 
hood's fancy those hills were mysterious, — 
very, very mysterious ! I knew not what 
might be beyond them. Perhaps the world 
came to an end there, where the sky came 
down like a curtain. The world was as new 



ADIEU TO EDEN. 27 

to me then as to the ancients. The day was 
in October. Leaves had begun to grow too 
beautiful to describe. The thistle was send- 
ing forth its children into the bright sky, 
upborne in parachutes that could be trusted, 
beyond all kith and kin, never to return again. 
Already the cheerful finches had sung their 
flocking note, and into the distant clouds the 
smoke-wreaths of many a quiet hamlet were 
gathered quietly and were at rest. My 
brother and I were allowed to go that day on 
an exploring expedition to those hills that 
seemed so far away. Oh, what a daring un- 
dertaking it was ! How suddenly I seemed 
to grow toward manhood when I really 
found that I was going so far away to visit 
the long, bright, patient, mysterious hills ! A 
visit to the world's end would not awaken in 
me now such brave exhilaration. I had read 
about Robinson Crusoe, about Cortez, about 
adventurers on our western plains ; but noth- 
ing could have increased the sense of ad- 
venture which attended the thought of this 



28 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

wondrous enterprise. Well do I remember 
looking back, after reaching the first knoll, 
to see if the old house looked smaller ! How 
well I can now see the column of blue smoke 
as it rose straight up from the great chimney ! 
To us boys every field was a prairie, every 
stream a great river, every thicket a "forest 
primeval," every wild apple-tree the natural 
fruit of the virgin earth, before unknown to 
the eye or palate of mortal man. We saw 
hawks describing their great circles against 
the blue zenith ; and — as strange and pic- 
turesque to us as to the followers of Colum- 
bus were the bright flamingoes — were several 
long-necked "squawking'' herons. At last 
we reached the hills. How marvellous the 
ascent! From time to time we would look 
back and name the distant farmhouses. We 
could see two villages which — white clusters 
of peaceful cottages that they were — seemed 
like so many great cities. And when we 
had nearly reached the summit, the spires of 
far-off Hopkinton rose to view, — a sight 



ADIEU TO EDEN. 29 

which thrilled us then as would now the 
domes and minarets of Constantinople.' 
Climbing a tall tree which rose above the 
others that crowned the summit, with as 
much joy and sense of triumph as Balboa 
must have felt when he looked out upon the 
Pacific Ocean, we gazed upon the before un- 
known world bevond. There, behold ! were 
long rivers, smoke-laden cities, forests wild 
and forbidding, shining lakes, and distant, 
cloud-like mountains. 

And then we came home, — to the meek, 
humble, commonplace old home of mother 
and father. It was nightfall, and we were 
tired and hungry and sleepy, as only boys 
can be after such a day as that. It was a 
great day because it had changed the world. 
Life was never the same to me again. My 
horizon was extended, but oh, at what cost ! 
This earth became larger, but only at the 
sacrifice of that near, sweet, brooding Eden 
of the old roof-tree. A secret sense of hav- 
ing advanced, an unquenchable flame of ad- 



30 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

venture, — which, in one way and another, 
would never cease to burn, — had been kin- 
dled. Hereafter I knew that no parental 
door-yard could contain and limit me ! 
Whatever other years might reveal, the de- 
cree had gone forth to the uttermost bounds 
of that country which we call the Soul, and 
restlessness and dim apprehensions of struggle 
had supplanted forever the peace and trust 
of infancy. 

III. 

To pass on from that hour to the hour of 
the birth of the spirit, after the fierce tra- 
vailings of experience, is as a journey through 
a pitiless and friendless wilderness. It is a 
journey through the uncertainty of Fate, the 
torments of doubt, through wastes of soul- 
sickening disappointment. But the end will, 
I trust, find us restored to the Life of all, 
wherein there is joy forevermore. Wild, dark, 
foreboding, and cruel is the wilderness just 
outside the first bright Eden of childhood and 



ADIEU TO EDEN. 31 

youth, but after that is the new birth, — the 
birth 'from above. 

" It is a new birth, 
A ray of immortality," 

it is when we behold, behind the shadows, 
the imperishable realities. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HOW SHALL I LIVE ? 
I. 

1\ /TAN alone, of all God's creatures, lives 
**-* ■*■ consciously between a Past and a Fu- 
ture. Herein we differ, so far as we know, 
from the brutes. To them there appears 
little or no Past or Future. They seem to 
realize, and that only dimly, the Present. 
But man never stands still in Time. While 
it is true that all we have is the Present, 
yet it is likewise true that man has not and 
never had a Present ; for when we have 
created even the faintest intellectual image 
of it, it has passed away. 

" Yesterday the sullen year 

Saw the snowy whirlwind fly ; 
Mute was the music of the air, 
The herd stood drooping by : 



HOW SHALL I LIVE ? 33 

Their raptures now that wildly flow, 
No yesterday nor morrow know. 
'T is man alone that joy descries 
With forward or reverted eyes." 

And now, after the brief moment of inno- 
cence is passed, what question presses upon 
the mind of all ? It is this : How shall I 
live, and to what end ? What shall be the 
main purpose of my life ? Shall I devote 
this life to success ? Shall I seek pleasure, 
or even happiness, for its own sake ? Shall 
I struggle for eminence, or relax into com- 
placence and peaceful indolence ? Such is 
the question which at life's crucial hour 
awaits an answer, and will not be put off. 
It is at the hour when youth emerges into 
manhood or womanhood. And behold what 
visions then appear ! Great heights are be- 
held in dim outline, deep gulfs are appre- 
hended. And then, too, our better ■ angels 
are heard near at hand, and we understand 
them and resolve to follow them faithfully. 
But unfortunately we soon get involved in 

3 



34 GLIMPSES OP A BETTER LIFE. 

the shadows and forget the realities. We are 
thrown off our guard by untoward circum- 
stance. The years pass swiftly away. As 
they come and go our duties and anxieties 
increase. Fainter and fainter become the 
ideals of youth. The noise of commerce, 
the roarings of trade, the jealousies of cliques 
and parties ; the eager and selfish graspings 
after distinction and places of fame ; the 
petty irritations that arise in the smallest 
circles; the unforeseen disappointments that 
somehow come forth where we had least ex- 
pected them ; the heartless events that crush 
us and become calamities because we had not 
prepared to meet them ; dislodgements from 
positions of comfort and ease, — all these 
children of Experience throng upon us, and 
it wellnigh requires the gift of perennial 
youth — which no man hath — to rise above 
them and find joyance and justice in human 
life. 



HOW SHALL I LIVE ? 35 

II. 

Oh, how wild and reckless is this cruel 
Manipulator of human life ! He tosses us 
about without mercy. Man says, " Now I will 
do this and this ; I will build mansions this 
year ; I will read books, I will make journeys, 
I will have pleasure." He lays plans, and 
takes comfort in the thought of success. It 
seems worth all time and strength, all edu- 
cation and aspiration, to be" successful," — to 
make money, to ride in carriages, to travel, 
to move in society, to have seen sights. So 
great is the inundation of such interests as 
these that men forget to ask again and again, 
" How shall we live ? " And fortunate it is 
for those who ever come to see, even in mor- 
tifying humility, with what triumphant skill 
the demon of Time cunningly leads them on 
from one foolish purpose to another foolish 
purpose until foolish Habit gains ascendency 
over their will. In this labyrinth of chance 
and convulsive struggle life becomes but a 



36 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

senseless game, — a ruthless game, where 
everybody thinks that everybody is seeking 
to befool everybody, — a long and tedious 
masquerade ! Is it not pitiful beyond the 
telling when men and women find themselves 
playing at a game of life, with their false 
faces, their conventional hypocrisies, their 
smirkings and mincings and shameless gloss- 
ings of positive vices ? 



CHAPTER Y. 

CALLING BACK. 
I. 

/^H, remember then, if flames pour not 
^•^ down over your already blinded eyes, 
the moment when you stood at the parting 
of the way, and asked, "How shall I live ?" 
You stood there ! No life, however buoyant, 
however dazzled in the flame of pleasure, 
however pressed by circumstance, but has 
asked, or will ask that question. It was the 
moment when " deep called unto deep ; " 
when the unsounded flood of the everlast- 
ing Divinity came furiously pouring over the 
trembling soul, to lift it, or submerge it. 
Above were the Eternities with their stars 
of hope smiling upon human aspiration, — 
beckoning with their lingers of light, to come 
ever toward them. All around were the 
verities and the mighty realities of the life 



38 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

that is, appealing to the eternal qualities of 
human nature. There Faith called for alle- 
giance, there Duty demanded that her voice 
be heard. Nature sang of the imperishable 
truths of which she is but the symbol. If we 
could only call those moments back again ! 
If they would come to us and bid us enter 
life anew ! If we only could grasp them, and 
feel again the fresh, the nameless delight of 
youth and love and innocence, which caused 
all things to seem real and true and good ! 
Call out, baffled, crushed, mistaken, sin- 
sick spirit, call out for the early days ! 
Bid Time turn back the sun and reverse the 
years, that you may awake and find this 
thoroughfare of life nought but a teeming 
and seething apparition, and all that seems 
a dreadful mockery the work of a fevered, 
laboring brain ! 

II. 

This calling back of our burdened hearts 
for the early days, and these memories of 



CALLING BACK. 39 

Paradise, are the never-ceasing birth-pangs 
of the immortal part of us. Man cannot 
cause the Sun to stand still upon Gibeon, 
nor the Moon in the valley of Aijalon. He 
cannot bring back the Past. Henceforth 
there must be darkness, the unbroken sod, 
the wild beast, the hunger and the cold. 
But all this because man is able to meet it ! 
When he learns that he transcends all cir- 
cumstance, man passes beyond defeat. The 
time comes when the craving to solve the 
enigmas of life sufficiently to gain the sur- 
passing peace, is irresistible. He then goes 
forward, and the first great difficulty of the 
wilderness is transcended. He then knows 
that, whatever the intervening struggles, he 
will arrive, — 

" I go to prove my soul ! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, 
I ask not : but unless God send his hail, 
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow, 
In some good time, his good time, I shall arrive. 
He guides me and the bird. In his good time 1 " 



40 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

And it is when this thought settles over his 
soul like a sweet balm, that other thoughts 
find their way into his reflections, of comfort 
and reconciliation. He knows he cannot 
turn back. Having entered the flood, he must 
now go on or drown. But he cannot drown ; 
so he knows that, engulfed in the single 
divine alternative, he is to go forward and 
arrive. And then he begins to become a new 
creature. Then, as in the worm the butter- 
fly, so in his body terrestrial begin to form 
the rudiments of the body celestial ; or, as in 
the far-off mass of floating protoplasm there 
were the dim prophecies of all organic life, 
so within his soul gather the faint centres of 
angelic being. Then come thoughts of his 
greatness and his great destiny ; then come 
other glimpses of a better life. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LONELINESS OF PROGRESS. 
I. 

A LL true progress is made in loneliness. 
***■ The world-prophets in their hours of 
greatest agony and in the eve of their great- 
est triumphs have ever had occasion to say, 
even of their nearest and dearest companions, 
"What, canst thou not watch with me one 
hour ? " No ; not one hour ! We have friends 
in our prosperity, friends in our sorrow, friends 
in our sickness, friends in our death ; but 
friends to watch with us in the Gethsemane of 
the soul no man ever had. It is then we may 
talk with God, and only with God. The world 
may then be bright enough without, but it is 
lonely and dark within. None can know you 
then save yourself and God. And even then 
you cannot know yourself as God knows you. 



42 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

It is the hour of moral triumph over re- 
proach, over passion, over persecution, over 
ignorance, and over the dead past. The 
world cries, " See ! one possessed of de- 
mons ! let us stone him. ' He, being a man, 
maketh himself a God.' " But that higher 
Voice whispers, " Woe unto you when all 
men shall speak well of you ! " Our own 
divinities must always rebuke us whenever 
we level down our higher conceptions of duty 
and truth to the realized standards of our 
time and place. They rebuke us because 
therein is the defeat of all progress. To ar- 
rive at Life, our individual lives must expand 
to higher virtues. In us all there is the re- 
flection of Nature's sternest moods. In spite 
of. itself the world shall be lifted. And if 
at times it seems as if one man must bear 
the awful burden, so it must be lifted. 
Then are we all the world's redeemers, for 
whosoever transcends one sin, transcends it 
for all men. Every moral triumph of the 
individual is a triumph for the world ; else — 



THE LONELINESS OF PROGRESS. 43 

" The pillared firmament is rottenness 
And earth's base built on stubble." 

Thus it is we prove the soul, — prove it to 
be more of God and heaven than of man and 
the world. Cast out of the first Eden, we 
walk on burning rays of light to the second 
Eden. And the voices, and the child-faces, 
and the happy memories of the past, and the 
revelations that our eyes just begin to behold, 
— all combine to give us courage and zeal. 
Then are we no longer beggars knocking at 
the gates for bread we have not earned. And, 
sooner or later, the world itself sheds tears 
of gratitude when it learns of one who was 
steadfast when men reproached him ; that one 
meant them nought but good when the mul- 
titudes jeered and hissed and stoned him ; 
that between him and his God there was no 
cloud of unfaith ; and that through good and 
evil report, through lies, slander, and cow- 
ardly insinuation, the compass of his being 
was ever true to its lodestar. Waves of 
deadly hate, of jealousy that is never weary 



44 GLIMPSES OP A BETTER LIFE. 

in wrong-doing, of cunning conspiracy and 
stupid scorn, may beat against the citadel of 
true manhood, lit by the grace of God ; but 
sooner or later, the tide sleeps, and there is 
a great calm of gratitude over all the world. 



II. 

Surely, this is a fit truth to be cut in mar- 
ble ! In splendid and thrilling cadence, in 
distant moanings, murmurings, rollings, and 
thunderings like that of the sea, the great 
organ of St. Patrick's Cathedral throbs and 
swells. And as.you enter, the glorious statue 
of John McNeil Boyd, who in 1861 was lost 
off the rocks at Kingston in attempting to 
rescue the crew of the " Neptune," stands be- 
fore you. A coil of rope is in his right 
hand, in the act of throwing; his strong, 
broad shoulders thrown back ; his head, 
erect and luminous, with flowing locks ; his 
lips firm, and eyes intense, — it is a monu- 
ment all instinct with the spirit of self-sacri- 



THE LONELINESS OF PROGRESS. 45 

ficing heroism. In that splendid presence 
you read this inscription, — 

" Safe from the rocks whence swept thy manly form, 
The tide's white rush, the stepping of the storm, 
Borne with a public pomp, by just decree, 
Heroic sailor ! from that fatal sea, 
A city vows this marble unto thee. 
And here, in this calm place, where never din 
Of earth's great water-floods shall enter in ; 
Where to our human hearts two thoughts are given, — 
One, Christ's self-sacrifice, the other heaven, — 
Here it is meet for grief and love to grave 
The Christ-taught bravery that died to save 
The life not lost, but found beneath the wave." 

The larger and better heroes of the world 
are ever like him, — hurling the line of self- 
sacrifice into the teeth of the storm. It is 
thus that their lives are not lost, " but found 
beneath the waves." Sooner or later the tide 
sleeps, and there is a great calm of gratitude 
over all the world. 

III. 

Our natures are really as mysterious and 
many-sided as the bright natural world about 



46 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

us. We have our definite ends in view. We 
may struggle through every sort of misrepre- 
sentation and injustice that we may carry out 
the behest of conscience ; but woe to him who 
stops in that endeavor to explain his methods 
and give a foolish and curious multitude rea- 
sons for this or that ! One might as well 
attempt to explain why any particular drop 
of water happens to fall on any particular 
blade of grass. The conditions are infinite. 
Does not such a task involve the lives and 
opinions of past generations ? One has sim- 
ply to seek strength in the consciousness of 
eternal rectitude. That consciousness no man 
ever found insufficient, but it impels to hero- 
ism; indeed, it impels to that which is the 
very essence of heroism, namely, — love of the 
heroic. That was the element which raised 
the soul of the lonely Thoreau above the need 
of human companionship ; for his pen gath- 
ered fire when he had charged himself with 
the inspiration of the storm. His face must 
needs be cold and wet with the fierce sleet ; 



THE LONELINESS OF PROGRESS. 47 

about the little hut his winds must blow, and 
the surface of the lake must be lashed into 
foaming whitecaps. It was when the earth 
shook and the hills screamed in echoing an- 
swer to the bellowing clouds that his brain 
teemed with living thought and transformed 
his skull into a temple of the gods. To man 
sensitized at the battery of all power and 
truth, man electrified by contact with the Life 
of all, there comes that which responds to ail 
power, — even to that which is manifested in 
symbols of antagonism and devastation, rous- 
ing him to divine effort, and compelling him 
to sublime achievement. It is the heroism 
of the spirit which hastens and perfects our 
journey along Time's rugged and lonely path- 
way, and multiplies for us the blessed glimpses 
of a better life. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD. 
I. 

A ND yet with what trembling and trepi- 
**■ dation one comes to that consciousness 
of God which makes him a hero of the soul ! 
At that very moment when he may begin to 
grasp the thought of his transcendency, he 
feels his utter insufficiency and weakness. 
" A little lower than God, and crowned with 
glory and honor," and fighting his way with 
consummate courage and skill in the very 
vortex of conflicting forces ; and then, alas ! 
the thought of his insignificance — " What is 
man that Thou art mindful of him, and the 
son of man that Thou visitest him ? " Thus 
it is we move through the mind's wilderness 
in zigzag lines of confidence and despair. 
Man is free, — a god ! man is bound, — a slave ! 



THE GUARDIANSHIP OP GOD. 49 

At one moment he believes he may accom- 
plish whatever he may desire to do ; and at 
the next moment he feels that he is little 
more than the serf of his environment. 
Wherever at any moment he may be, the 
wall which limits his wisdom rises omin- 
ously before him. He at one moment be- 
lieves in his divine capacity, and at the next 
he doubts if he is anything but the dupe and 
plaything of cunning Fate. His longings and 
aspirations point him to the stars ; he prays 
for wings to make his flight thither ; he even 
begins to rise ; and soon the chain is straight- 
ened, and he finds that his feet are held to 
the rocks and shoals of Time, — "Thus far 
shalt thou go and no farther.' ' 

II. 

But it was ever the glad refrain of the an- 
cient psalmist that when he had taken his 
flight into heaven, or descended down into 
sheol, he found himself not unattended. 
When the darkness gathered about him the 

4 



50 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

thickest, he felt most distinctly and impres- 
sively the immanence of God. It was his 
glory to have reached his own limitations, 
and in every upward flight of wisdom into 
a higher and broader outlook to feel those 
limitations all the more keenly, because only 
in those limitations could he realize the un- 
limited and eternal. And so it has been with 
all the inspirers of faith, — with Socrates, 
Jesus, Paul, Goethe, Swedenborg, and thou- 
sands of others, — all feeling with Pascal, that 
though the universe may rise up to crush us, 
we are still greater than the thing which slays 
us, because we know that we are dying. 
Nothing but divine and eternal Life within 
the soul can tell man that he is capable of 
death. The daring affirmations of great men 
draw the sting of the grave ; for, being good 
interpreters of God, they yield to all men 
glimpses of that better life wherein our very 
mental inconsistencies are turned to our 
profit. What can be the secret of the great 
.faith of great souls ? How are they enabled 



THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD. 51 

to exclaim, without misgiving, that man is 
greater than the stars, more immortal than 
the everlasting hills, of more value than plan- 
ets ? It is good for us to put our trust in the 
confidences of the Christs, but may we never 
drink directly at the fountain whereat they 
are nourished ? What is it which serves them 
as perfectly as demonstration ? 

Is it not this thought, namely, that we are 
individual expressions of God ? Are we not 
units of the eternal Whole, forever coming into 
existence, forever unfolding, forever chang- 
ing, progressing, struggling ? And when we 
have expanded to wider ranges of sensibility 
to the spiritual forces playing about us, do 
we not cease to cling to the leading-strings 
of the great masters, and learn that we are 
hid with all the Christs of all time in God ? 
Then, if we ascend up into heaven we also 
find Him there ; and if we make our bed in 
the grave, behold, He is there ! The sense 
of His presence foreruns our knowledge. 
Knowing Him to be near, we have " great 



52 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

» 

boldness of speech." And the one thought 
which comes to us to raise us above the inex- 
orable limitations of the flesh is this, — that 
though we see but a short distance, He sees all 
things. We then know that in Him we are 
made sharers of all true wisdom. He be- 
comes the great Giver of the personal revela- 
tion, whispering, Thou canst not see, thou art 
of thyself blind and deaf and feeble even in 
thy greatest power ; thou canst of thyself do 
nothing. But I understand thee afar off. I 
remember that thou art dust. I know thy 
down-sitting and thine up-rising. 1 am ac- 
quainted with all thy ways. There is not a 
word in thy tongue, but lo, I knowest it 
altogether! 

III. 

Thus God knows all that can be known 
about us. The Infinite includes the finite. 
He overshadows and permeates man. There 
is not a mother in all the world, tending her 
little babe, with feeble, pulsing lips, with 



THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD. 53 

fingers quivering in its sleep, with visions 
passing across its eyelids, with whispers of 
the wings of angels stirring its little dimples 
into life, — there is not a human mother in all 
the world hovering in love over her helpless, 
sleeping baby, who knows, or begins to know, 
a millionth part of what might be known of 
her dear child. And yet, with what know- 
ledge there is on the one side and mere help- 
lessness on the other, there is a power mighty 
enough to move the world between them, to 
see to it that nothing this side that mother's 
grave shall harm that child. But in the 
kindred thought of God, we have the same 
thing exalted to infinite significance ! A 
weak, limited humanity on the one hand, a 
" Power more near my life than life itself " 
on the other. On the one hand a praying, 
struggling, hoping, courageous little person- 
ality, and on the other his infinite counter- 
part ; and between them a power of union and 
sympathy which, if violated, would cause the 
moon to run blood and the sun to hide its 



54 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

face. How then can we fail to be confident ? 
And why should we not exclaim from our 
housetops that " even the darkness hideth not 
from Thee, but the night shineth as the 
day!" 

IV. 

" Let us not live like foreigners in our own 
world." We have scarcely yet dreamed of 
the extent of our nature. For, allowing full 
consideration to our limitations, all things are 
ours, " Whether Paul, or Apollos, or the 
world, or life, or death, or things present, or 
things to come, all are yours ; and ye are 
Christ's ; and Christ is God's !" Nothing can 
be understood properly, no religion and no 
philosophy ; and, therefore, no mental, moral, 
or spiritual welfare is secure without first of 
all accepting God as the foundation principle. 
On that foundation rests all our peace in this 
life, our hope in the life to come. " In him 
we live and move and have our being." 
Honors of the world may tempt us, the in- 



THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD. 55 

herent desire for power may lure us on, the 
longing for great achievement may become 
the passion of our lives ; but after we have 
followed any course for a given time, the 
Eternal demands and, in one form or another, 
must have recognition. Then one cries, 
" Search me, God, and know my heart : try 
me and know my thoughts . . . and lead me 
in the way everlasting, — " exclaiming thus 
because of all agencies that lead us there is 
one, and only one, that can lead us in the 
" way everlasting," and that one is God. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

man's knowledge of god. 

T)UT if W e do see that God is " all in all," 
•*-^ and the life of all ; knowing us when 
we know not Him, and caring for us as a 
mother cares for her unconscious babe, how 
may we recognize Him and be drawn to Him 
until we become one with Him ? Upon this 
possibility hangs the practical efficacy of all 
religion. Can it be shown in the terms of 
philosophy ? Possibly. Can it be stated in 
scientific phrases ? Possibly. But, best of 
all, it may be taught in the symbols of human 
experience. It may be worth our while to 
notice that whenever anything appears in the 
New Testament which could be construed as 
a definition of God, the language is that of 
experience, and not that of theology, philoso- 
phy, or science. How is it that Jesus ex- 



man's knowledge of god. 57 

claims that " I and my Father are one ? " 
How is it that Paul writes of God as a " God 
of patience and of comfort," a " God of love 
and peace," and " one God and Father of all, 
who is over all, and through all, and in all " ? 
And how came the writer of 1 John to 
say of him that " God is love " ? It was the 
simple language of experience transmitting 
such wisdom as comes when man is brought 
" face to face with the Eternal." And as we 
are now concerned with such wisdom, we have 
no need to revert to any First Cause, any 
Unknown or Unknowable, any Infinite and 
Eternal Energy, from which all things pro- 
ceed, any Power not ourselves making for 
righteousness. Apt and helpful as such defi- 
nitions are to man's intellectual being, we 
must pass them by that we may come more 
closely to Him through the symbols of experi- 
ence. Can we not recognize God in the glow- 
ing warmth of human intercourse ? If you 
have a beloved friend, you do not know him 
by any estimation of faculty, any application 



58 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

of square and compass, any test of scales. 
Nor could you know him as a human soul, 
were you to go to the extremity of the scalpel 
and take down every particular portion of the 
temple in which he dwells. The scalpel is no 
prophet, no seer, no revealer of spiritual 
entities. It is but the key which unlocks 
the door of superficial knowledge. And yet 
you know your friend, even though you be 
blind and deaf. It is a knowledge which is 
proved by its exceptions. It is proved when 
we exclaim in humiliation, "I did not know 
him." You had trusted him because you 
thought you knew him ; but your knowledge 
proving false, you are in sorrow. But where 
it is not obscured by the sophistries of the 
flesh, it is true, beautiful, and mighty. It is 
deeper than the books contain, higher than 
systems impart. It is the insight of the spirit. 
It transcends the petty quibblings of man's 
discursive faculty. It is by this spiritual 
knowledge that lofty friendships are made 
possible, — friendships that can be relied upon 
in every need of prosperity or adversity. 



MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 59 

Such was the knowledge that the great 
teachers of religion have had of God. Men 
have always attempted to know Him intellect- 
ually alone, — one might say, physically. They 
have applied to Him only the standards of but 
one phase of their own small being, and have 
therefore failed ; they have measured Him 
with their foot-rules, and called Him infinite ; 
they have attempted to weigh Him in their 
balances of brass and gold, and have not 
succeeded ; they have endeavored to dissect 
Him and to enumerate His " attributes," and 
have become bewildered. But any such con- 
ceptions as have thus been secured have not 
represented that Life which throbs in the 
universe, giving it its myriad forms of mani- 
festation. At best they thus found but the 
vestiges of by-gone, lifeless deities of man's 
rudimentary past. In them is no glow and 
warmth, — nothing to fix one's faith upon, 
nothing to plant one's hope within. But 
when Jesus declared that " God is spirit, and 
they that worship Him must worship in spirit 



60 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

and truth," he revealed Him, not in the realm 
of discussion, but in the realm of life. The 
mother knows her babe no better after she 
has weighed it. The child knows not its 
parent according to the canons of physiology 
and anatomy and psychology. The truth is 
acquired by spiritual association. And when 
the physician has had his say, and the phren- 
ologist has applied his test, and the grave 
specialist has made his examination, then 
the parent and the child, transcending the 
deliveries of the human intellect, lock each 
other in the embrace of spiritual sympathy, 
being made one through that Love which binds 
together all the constellations of humanity 
into the general whole which is God, — " God 
is love." And when it is said that " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, ' and with all 
thy mind, and with all thy strength ; and 
thy neighbor as thyself," then is given to 
spiritual humanity what Newton gave to phy- 
sical bodies, — the statement of a universal 



man's knowledge of god. 61 

law of gravitation. If, then, we are to recog- 
nize God and be drawn to Him until we are one 
with Him, it is in the same way that we are 
drawn to those who are dear to us, — by that 
spiritual association which is the inspirer of 
love. 



CHAPTER IX. 

man's prayer to god. 

I. 

A ND what is the character of that asso- 
*~ *• ciation ? I answer, it is the same as 
that which exists between human beings, and 
it is developed in the same way. To know 
each other we must be together. To be to- 
gether we must so will. To know each other 
well, it sometimes requires years of voluntary 
association ; it sometimes requires but a mo- 
ment. We are to know God, and, knowing 
Him, to love Him in the same way. And if 
you ask, How is that association to be begun 
and continued ? the answer is, By Prayer. 
Not by what men have been pleased to call 
prayer, but something more. Not by incan- 
tation, not by formal offerings, not by sense- 
less begging; but by the retirement of the 



man's prayer to god. 63 

finite into the Infinite, the voluntary concen- 
tration of the human soul upon the inex- 
haustible Source of wisdom and strength. 
It is oraver after the manner of Jesus, — 
" Enter into thine inner chamber," and 
" This kind can come out by nothing save 
by prayer." The world has "entered in" 
from time immemorial ; and yet much that 
has been called prayer is mere ritual, some- 
times capable and often incapable of awaken- 
ing the spirit to true prayer. The soul prays 
as the body breathes. Our lungs, when they 
feel the touch of air, heave and expand in 
natural response to the element which evolved 
them ; and man's spirit, when it reaches 
consciousness, responds to the pressure about 
it of the divine Element of which it is the 
organ. 

" When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave 
To do the like ; our bodies but forerun 
The spirit's duty. True hearts spread and heave 
Unto their God, as flow'rs do to the sun. 

Give Him thy first thoughts, then ; so shalt thou 

keep 
Him company all day, and in Him sleep." 



64 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

True prayer, like true breathing, sustains 
life. Does the sleeping infant have any idea 
of what its breathing may accomplish ? Let 
that breathing be intelligently cultivated, and 
it may speak on the tongue of a Cicero or 
a Chatham; it may soar in the song of a 
Patti ; it may compel in the tones of a Bour- 
daloue ; it may carry its possessor through 
the struggle or the race. So prayer is the 
normal effort of the soul to gain and increase 
spiritual life and strength. It is generally as 
fickle as the breathing of a sick babe ; and 
yet, when we cease to pray, we cease. It 
expands our powers, leads us into invention 
and discovery and peace. Nor can it be said 
to be miraculous. It is as natural as any 
function. To regard prayer as the medium 
of the miraculous is the same as regarding 
breathing as a method, sufficient in itself, 
without the slightest voluntary training on 
our part, of singing a beautiful song. And 
as breathing is only a means whereby we 
may intelligently become sweet singers or 



man's prayer to god. 65 

powerful orators, so prayer is simply the 
means whereby we may perform good works 
and achieve great blessings. All true prayer, 
contrary to the view of many, is intensely 
practical. And just as there are two ways 
to breathe, so there are two ways to pray, 
— a right way and a wrong way. Let us 
suppose that one affirms that good singing is 
accomplished by good breathing, and that 
without good breathing there can be no good 
singing. It is true ; but it is not the whole 
of the truth. One affirming this, and nothing 
further, might breathe hard and soft, explode 
his breath and suppress it, blow and puff; 
but if that were all, no song would come 
forth. Again and again he might try, and 
still no song! After many trials, he con- 
cludes that something more than breathing 
must be done. The fallacy is apparent. Of 
course no song could be sung without breath ; 
but tone, and tune, and rhythm, and many 
other conditions must be observed to make 
the breathing effective. One might breathe 

5 



66 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

for eighty years, and never sing ; and yet, 
not a single note can be executed without 
breathing. 

We may say the like of prayer and pray- 
ing. We may remark that " more things are 
wrought by prayer than this world dreams 
of," or even that nothing is wrought without 
prayer. And if one accepts this statement, 
with nothing more, he might utterly fail. 
Acting upon it, he might plead, and beg, and 
implore without moving Heaven by his impor- 
tunity. And after long beseeching he might 
exclaim : u I have prayed long and ardently, 
because it is said that all things are possi- 
ble to him that prayeth, and without prayer 
nothing can be wrought; and yet, my 
prayers are not answered." Is not the great 
error manifest ? 

Again, for the sake of convenience we say 
that the laws of music all exist; that all 
tones are possible, and the means are within 
our reach, and that we have the power by 
breathing of producing it. And here is the 



man's prayer to god. 67 

lacking condition. We must apply all the 
laivs of music to our "breathing before the song 
issues. And so with praying. The great 
inventor believes that there exist certain 
laws of sound which might be brought into 
such relations with an electric current as to 
produce the phonograph ; and he enters into 
his " inner chamber " that he may discover 
those laws and bring about those relations. 
He feels sure that he is to meet there the 
Creator, both of the electric current and the 
laws that govern sound. He nothing doubts. 
It requires days, months, years perhaps, be- 
fore the receptacle of his mind is sufficient 
for the revelation ; but at last his importunity 
is rewarded. At first, by faint apprehension, 
he is made aware that a great fact is near at 
hand ; then he sustains a sudden glimpse of 
a perfect law; then a perception of related 
forces ; and so on, until his Sinai gives forth 
its secret. Beethoven, composing his Ninth 
Symphony in silence, beholding and hearing 
nothing that transpires about him, with a 



68 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

mind oblivious of all the distractions, the 
discords, and the troubles of his life, presents 
his petition to the Life of all. And at last 
the grand music breaks upon his mental ear. 
He hears it in his deafness, as if it came from 
the chorus of some upper world, and his 
whole soul is rapt in unutterable joy. Then 
he catches the spiritual sound, and places it 
where it may be interpreted into symbols of 
sense. 

Thus prayer of the true sort, which is no 
mere jargon of meaningless words, makes all 
things possible. It moves mountains, builds 
dizzy towers and ponderous bridges, it girdles 
the globe with the human voice. In the 
Infinite Intelligence is a knowledge of all 
things. God knows how all things are ac- 
complished. If man wishes to know, how 
shall he effect his purpose ? Where shall he 
apply for knowledge and power? Why, 
where it is! We apply to Him. We turn 
our faces to Him, as the lily its petals, and 
we receive the thing our heart desires. 



man's prayer to god. 69 

When our minds are receptive they are filled 
with bounties. In life's sterner experiences 
strength is given, in perplexity patience is 
given, and in our sorrow peace is given, by 
this pleading of the soul of man in his " inner 
chamber." 

II. 

This thought need hardly be brought into 
the more limited sphere of daily life. There 
is scarcely an hour which does not bring us 
before some obstacle which we must needs 
remove, some impediment which we must cast 
aside, some problem, great or small, which 
clamors for solution. And since in the em- 
pire of all wisdom and all love there are 
no insurmountable difficulties, we enter that 
spiritual empire for directions, and seek not 
in vain. What God wishes to have done on 
this planet through us, He can find a way to 
impart, if we listen. Surely, would He not 
satisfy all the longings of His children if 
He could find them attentive to the divine 



70 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

instruction? Our children are constantly 
asking us questions whose answers we would 
impart if we thought them capable of under- 
standing us. We may know the answers, 
but they could not receive them, because the 
time is not yet. The spirit oftentimes ex- 
pands in great pulses, and what we could not 
understand at all yesterday may be a plat- 
itude to-day. Be sure that when the Eternal 
finds within us a place large enough to write 
His revelations down, they will there appear 
as if written with a finger of light. And if we 
seek Him earnestly, His secrets will not be 
long withheld. Then the association between 
God and man shall more and more become 
like that which binds true friends together, 
and glimpses of the better life will assuredly 
appear. 



CHAPTER X. 

god's prayer to man. 

" A ND the Lord spake unto Moses face to 
-**• face, as a man speaketh unto his 
friend" Abraham was also called " the 
friend of God." And this was so because 
the Will of the one was the Conscience of 
the other. If man's conscience be not God's 
will, then are we indeed as " clouds without 
water, carried along by winds ; autumn trees 
without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the 
roots ; wild waves of the sea, foaming out of 
their own shame ; wandering stars, for whom 
the blackness of darkness hath been reserved 
forever." In the realm of man's intellect 
and aspiration he seeks and finds companion- 
ship with God through prayer. But through 
conscience God seeks and finds companion- 



72 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

ship with man. Thus is the association of 
the divine and human reciprocal. 

" I see in God both God and man ; 
He, man and God in me. 
I quench His thirst, and He, in turn, 
Helps my necessity." 

Whether conscience be merely the result of 
the experiences of the race brought down 
through the generations, whereby we may 
choose that which will, in the long run, yield 
the greatest pleasure and the least pain, it 
matters not in our present considerations. It 
is a great fact, and a fact whose greatness 
cannot be diminished by the label we attach 
to it. Whether we frankly regard it as the 
voice of God warning us away from what is 
hurtful and urging us on to what contributes 
to our welfare ; or whether we reduce it to 
the cold formulas of science, it is yet that 
power which, in the region of our ethical ex- 
istence, is as indomitable and terrible as the 
passion for the propagation of the species is 
in the sphere of physical life. Its genesis is 



god's prayer to man. 73 

far from being explained, but its presence in 
human affairs is an indubitable fact. We can 
trace with some degree of accuracy the de- 
vious line of experience ; we can analyze, 
after a fashion, the course of knowledge ; but 
whence comes this little candle that throws 
its beams into the hitherto dark world of the 
individual, no man can fully tell, except he 
receives it as coming from God. This sense 
which attends us on our way over the stony 
path from childhood to the place of peace, 
forever saying, Turn now to the right, now to 
the left ; now pass thou up those dizzy heights, 
now down into those dreary depths and shades 
of night — what this may be in itself, and 
whence it came, if we knew, we should know 
the mind of the Eternal. In religion we 
delight to call it the spark of the eternal 
radiance shining into the soul of man, the 
voice of God speaking to man, or the principle 
of eternal life. It is so clear a light, so audi- 
ble a voice, so noble a principle the world 
over, that we have come to trust it for much 



74 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

that we do not know and for much that in 
love and tears we hope for. It is the savior 
of the world from its own undoing. " It 
makes cowards of us all " whenever we are 
unfaithful to its mandates. And while it is 
the life-light to the righteous in whatever sea 
of trouble, it is a flame of hell to him who 
staggers in the jaws of infamy and crime. It 
prompts us to sing, as the lark, in the eye of 
the upper world ; it wrings from us the cries 
of the damned in the lower regions of misery 
and vice. It is fearful and wonderful and in 
the style of God's mightiest works, because it 
is of him. In its sublimity we tremble, in its 
strength we glory, and in its promise we are 
at peace. It is therefore expedient for us to 
recognize it, on the divine side of life, in the 
same way that we recognize prayer on the 
human side of life, — as spiritual importunity ; 
for conscience is the prayer of God to man. 
Prayer looks up unto the hills for strength, 
conscience looks down into the valleys for 
righteousness. Prayer is the cry of a soul 



god's prayer to man. 75 

for help, conscience is the demand of Soul for 
truth and virtue. They are the reciprocal 
forces that hold humanity in the orbits of the 
true life, and either without the other would 
plunge the spiritual universe into confusion. 



CHAPTER XL 

man's anxiety. 

I. 

T F, however, man is the " praying animal," 
-*• he is no less the anxious spirit. And 
this anxiety has often led him into false views 
of life and fruitless pleadings for help. It 
has caused him to become impatient and even 
exasperated ; so that, childlike, he has madly 
kicked and stormed at heaven's gate, as one 
beside himself. " Rest in the Lord and wait 
patiently for Him " he has not, and therefore 
has he suffered many times the consequences 
of his own indiscretion and folly. The very 
thought of prayer has thus become corrupted 
until it is turned against law and the divine 
will, instead of being made their ally. But 
great men have always shown their strength 
by their capacity not to hurry. The greatest 



man's anxiety. 77 

boon of religion is its assurance that whether 
we labor, or whether we linger, if so be we 
are true to our highest impulse, we shall reach 
the goal of our noblest welfare. Is not that 
the most delightful journey where we have 
not to " make time," but may live large hours 
of profitable idleness and drink deeply at the 
fountains of " living water " ? Surely we may 
say,— 

" In some good time, his good time, I shall arrive." 

When Jesus exclaimed, " Be not anxious 
for the morrow," he knew that the anxiety 
which corrupts prayer and all those sacred 
relations which hold us to the Life of all, would 
retard rather than advance spiritual growth. 
Faithful men are confident of the integrity 
of things. Anxiety is illness. The end of 
spiritual endeavor is peace and confidence. 
One would hardly think this were so were he 
to cast a superficial glance over the pitiful 
unrest of institutional religion. The seeth- 
ing and turbid competition of sects for the 



78 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

mastery of the masses is no evidence of spir- 
itual serenity, but rather an indication of 
ecclesiastical vanity, which delights more 
in temples made with hands than in the 
houses eternal in the heavens. The zeal of 
both Jesus and Paul was deep and earnest, — 
deeper and more earnest than any anxiety, — 
and it sought to uplift and save mankind. 
But that was a very different thing from the 
fever-heat which brings sleepless nights and 
delirious days in the interests of organizations 
whose main glory consists in long registers of 
nominal converts and multitudinous forms of 
real and personal estate. I do not deny that 
in the terrible days when Cromwell and his 
armies were laying waste the symbols of past 
aspiration (those beautiful abbeys of Great 
Britain, whose walls had for centuries con- 
tained the simplest and sweetest devotion and 
quiet faith) they were largely resenting 
wrongs and crushing abuses which violated 
the decrees of a higher ethic ; but with it all 
there flowed a spirit of unholy adventure and 



man's anxiety. 79 

greed which subsisted upon the exaggerated 
anxieties of the masses. And, further back, 
too, kindred abnormal expressions of this 
anxiety are everywhere found on the pages 
of history. When thousands abandoned the 
natural avenues of life and irrevocably com- 
mitted themselves to ceaseless formalities, in 
protest, largely, against the excessive anxie- 
ties of a fevered state, we find innumerable 
evidences of a sin-sick and disheartened race. 
Paul the Simple, filled with the universal 
disquietude of his time, proposed to himself 
three hundred prayers a day, and was over- 
whelmed with distress upon hearing of a 
virgin who said seven hundred prayers in the 
same time. To " pray without ceasing " in 
that early age contained no thought of that 
prayerful peace of mind and heart which is 
the very essence of belief. Acts of piety 
were acts of distress and pain and mortifica- 
tion, and the exercise of every conceivable 
austerity, instead of the spontaneous utter- 
ance of human nature sheltered under the 



80 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

wings of perfect love. Excesses of the spirit 
then, as now, were manifested by excesses of 
the flesh ; and, in his anxiety, man believed it 
his duty to flee from those " ways of pleasant- 
ness " and " paths of peace " which render 
our fickle and restless nature hopeful and 
serene. It was as if men of a religious turn 
were blind to those deep principles of the 
spiritual life which were so familiar to the 
founders of Christianity. They groped and 
wandered in the wilderness, and, in their lone- 
liness, called out through the darkness, — 
called wildly, as children cry in rage or ter- 
ror, — and would not be still that they might 
hear the " still, small voice " of the Eternal 
which whispered softly in their inmost souls. 
In hunger and nakedness and sleeplessness 
and self-inflicted torments certain salutary 
lessons were learned, but only by setting at 
nought many of the greatest achievements of 
the old Hebrew and later Christian spiritual 
life. They had learned to " hunger and thirst 
after righteousness," but the time had not 



man's anxiety. 81 

come for them to be " filled," — to " rest in 
the Lord and wait patiently for Him." 

II. 

And yet " I know that whatsoever God 
doeth, it shall be forever." Life is life for- 
ever ; and the Christ came that we might have 
that eternal life more abundantly. Where 
life is there is the superlative power. Nothing 
can essentially defeat it. It was the first 
promise looking to the creation of the universe, 
and it is still the end of universal hope. Life 
is never weary, never hurries, never fails " in 
His good time," to reach its appointed end. 
To gain it is the end of all pure religious 
effort ; to broaden and cleanse the house for 
it to abide in is the true object of all educa- 
tion ; to retain and increase and enjoy it is 
the boon of friendship between man and man, 
and man and God. Of the living, God is 
God. But life can never be defined. Its 
greatest and best witness is its own peaceful 
presence. It is the very climax of paradox 

6 



82 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

and contradiction when it is mentally con- 
sidered. Men fear death, and then because 
of that fear kill themselves. " I ought not 
and cannot die," says one, " and yet I am 
dying." " Life ceases as we behold it, and 
yet it is immortal." All know what it is, and 
yet no one can tell you what it is. There is 
no intellectual demonstration of it ; but in its 
activity and presence there is the indubitable 
proof of what it is. And after it has wrought 
upon these human bodies and awakened to 
individuality these points of divine aspiration 
and love, then it is manifested in its most 
beautiful phase, — that of surpassing peace 
and patient waiting. Such is the end of the 
struggle we are engaged in, the object of our 
prayers and the consummation of all philan- 
thropy. No more feverish anxiety, no more 
travailings that cannot be uttered, but confi- 
dence and the conviction of things not seen, 
of endless welfare. Behold, the Prince of 
Peace shall come ! 



CHAPTER XII. 



UP AND ONWARD. 



/CONDITIONED as we are however, there 
^- / are yet many things that we should know 
else we cannot arrive at the place of rest. 
We have beheld a glimpse of the better life, 
but the way thither is filled with hardships. 
If we have found God in our prayers, well! 
If through conscience He has spoken to us, 
well! If we have penetrated through the 
veil which our self-imposed anxiety throws 
over our spiritual vision, and have seen, in a 
single glimpse even, the promise of the " peace 
that passeth understanding," well ! But we 
have not yet reached the second Eden; we 
have merely seen its reflection against the 
distant sky. We have yet to commend our- 
selves, "as ministers of God, in much 
patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in dis- 



84 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

tresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tu- 
mults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, 
in pureness, in knowledge, in long suffering, 
in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love un- 
feigned, in the word of truth, in the power of 
God; by the armor of righteousness on the 
right hand and on the left, by glory and dis- 
honor, by evil report and good report ; as 
deceivers, and yet true ; as unknown, and yet 
well known ; as dying, and behold, we live ; 
as chastened, and not killed ; as sorrowful, 
yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making 
many rich; as having nothing, and yet pos- 
sessing all things." 

Surely, we are points of divine life, and 
while we look into the eyes of our fellow-men 
and behold the evidence of individual spirits, 
we should not forget that they are rooted 
with us in the Life of all. We have yet to 
quicken our sympathies by large outlooks 
upon mankind ; to enliven our ideals by con- 
tact with the ideals of other souls ; to break 
up the troublesome incrustations that are 



UP AND ONWARD. 85 

deposited by habit and routine, else we shrink 
below and behind the barriers of convention- 
ality, and become incapable of expansion. 
The sweet lesson of the Chambered Nau- 
tilus is ever with us, urging both mind and 
soul to build their " more stately mansions." 
In our present day when, as never before, the 
world begins to realize that " He Himself giveth 
to all life, and breath, and all things ; and He 
hath made of one every nation of men for to 
dwell on all the face of the earth, having de- 
termined their appointed seasons, and the 
bounds of their habitation," ought we not 
also earnestly to proclaim the principles of 
universal brotherhood ? The same great 
forces operate alike in all. In the simple 
child of the forest and in the strong repre- 
sentative of the Saxon race the same general 
spirit is at work expressing itself in the mani- 
fold forms of love and hope and aspiration. 
As time goes on and the nations of the earth 
increase their mutual interests, they must also 
more and more recognize their mutual obli- 



86 GLIMPSES OP A BETTER LIFE. 

gations, until provincialism with all its petty 
conceits is no more, until the hatreds of par- 
ties and empires are done away, until war 
ceases and " the holv melodies of love arise." 
As water is purified by constant falling and 
evaporation, so human hearts must keep their 
currents fresh and strong by the perpetual 
intermingling of their sympathies. The clois- 
ter and the monastery may serve the world, 
but only after the world has given them food 
for assimilation. Solitude imparts eccen- 
tricity if long embraced. Harmony and 
uniformity of spiritual movements is more 
and more perfectly attained as the human 
spirit becomes sensitive to universal influ- 
ences. In that heaven whose vestiges we 
have seen in the child-faces of the world and 
heard in the sweet voices of the true saints 
there are no provinces, adherence to no patois. 
Heaven is the " household of God " wherein 
we speak not of parties, cliques, sects, and 
nations, but of the " children of the living 
God." " None of us liveth to himself." The 



UP AND ONWARD. 87 

thought of Rome and Ephesus and Thessa- 
lonica must ever give strength, purpose, and 
glory to Jerusalem and Antioch. Small 
crotchets must be transcended, narrow pre- 
judices must be outgrown, and in the life of 
the world the individual must save his soul. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

DUTY. 
I. 

A ND thus to press on over the wilderness 
-^** to the light before, through trials many, 
we must have the sense of Duty. And that 
sense is more than expediency, more than the 
mere pursuit of pleasure, more than the warn- 
ing of Fate; and it must be supported by 
all the agencies we have thus far dwelt upon, 
— by the sense of God, by the communion of 
the divine and the human through prayer and 
conscience, and by the presence of spiritual 
confidence and peace. The consideration of 
Duty may well be referred to the province 
of concrete experience. 

II. 

One is delayed at a distant and obscure 
railway-station in the heart of the Sierras. 



DUTY. 89 

While waiting wearily in the rude little build- 
ing which serves as a shelter for freight and 
express boxes and packages, and for passen- 
gers as well, he suddenly hears the clicking 
of the telegraph. He is unable to read the 
message by the sound ; but the operator in- 
stantly listens, and in a few moments leaves 
the room. Presently he returns and resumes 
his chair. What he has done, why he has 
done it, or what might be the consequence 
if he had not done it, the traveller is unable 
to say. In a little while the distant sound 
of an approaching train is heard, and me- 
chanically the belated passenger looks 
through the little window and watches the 
long line of freight-cars as they come lumber- 
ing up the steep grade. At a certain point 
from the station the train stops. Then it 
begins to go through the mysterious evolu- 
tions peculiar to freight-trains, until it finally 
stands on a side track. There it remains 
motionless, the steam escaping regularly from 
the valves of the locomotive, and the trainmen 



90 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

standing carelessly about, chatting and laugh- 
ing. Before long, however, the traveller's 
attention is arrested by the distant roar of 
another train. He again looks from the win- 
dow, and at first beholds nothing. Then sud- 
denly there comes in sight around the curve 
in the road a locomotive with great volumes 
of smoke and steam pouring into the air, with 
wild signals of whistle and bell ; and scarcely 
has the looker-on time to note that it is a 
passenger-express before it flies by the sta- 
tion in the midst of dust and cloud, and dis- 
appears in the mountains with shriek and 
roar that awaken a thousand echoes for miles 
around. Then the traveller recalls the click- 
ing of the telegraph, and he is now able to 
imagine the import of the message. It was 
the duty of the station-agent to receive, and 
having received, to heed it. It came from 
some far-distant manager of the road, and 
after passing through a long series of trans- 
missions, according to a perfect system of rail- 
way regulations, reached its destination, — the 



DUTY. 91 

ear of that obscure agent in the heart of the 
Sierras. That duty consisted in placing a 
signal for the side-tracking of the freight- 
train. Who could imagine the extent and 
scope of the consequences related to that sim- 
ple duty ? It was a very small matter for the 
operator in that far-away place to hear and 
understand and obey what was unintelligible 
to the waiting traveller. But who could tell 
what great issues hung upon his obedience ? 
To say that upon it depended the happiness 
of family groups in California, New England, 
France, and Russia; to say that on it de- 
pended the business prosperity of houses in 
Liverpool, Calcutta, Tokio, San Francisco, and 
New York ; to say that on it depended the 
efficiency of colleges and universities, — not 
to mention an almost interminable railroad 
schedule affecting all the main lines of com- 
merce and travel by land and sea, — is merely 
to hint the importance of that single act. 
That station-agent's duty was involved in a 
vast scheme of human affairs. The message 



92 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

came to him. He instantly obeyed it. It 
was to him pre-eminently " a still, small voice," 
and to him alone. Had he not obeyed it, the 
whole of civilization would have received a 
shock ; for it was related to a vast labyrinth 
of well-defined elements of human happiness 
and prosperity, reaching to the farthest cor- 
ners of the earth, and to the isles of the sea. 

Thus we observe the character of Duty. 

On a certain day and hour one sits quietly 
thinking. Perhaps the mists of every-day 
life — those half-clouds that prevent our see- 
ing clearly into the higher strata of existence 
— have momentarily cleared away. Music, 
or an inspiring book, or a penetrating proph- 
ecy, may have put him into possession of 
himself. And he suddenly beholds a sur- 
prising duty. He is vexed that he sees it so 
clearly ; he is not prepared for it ; he would 
rather have known nothing of it. It is a duty 
that comes upon him boldly and irresistibly to 
give him disquietude. Others do not know 
of it, have not heard the message which came 



DUTY. 93 

to him alone, of all the world. If he chooses 
he may disregard it. Mists of casuistry he 
may invoke to obscure it. He may plead to 
himself that he does not see what he knows 
he does see ; no one shall be the wiser. He 
has it all his own way. God prays to him, but 
he may fail to answer the petition. But the 
station-agent in the heart of the Sierras heard 
not more clearly the message of the telegraph. 
If he persuades himself that he did not know 
of the duty, or that it was the duty of an- 
other, he may enjoy a sickly self-justification 
for his neglect. But in that case no one can 
fathom the consequences. It will undoubt- 
edly mean infinitely more either way than 
the person interested can comprehend. The 
message thus delivered comes filtering down 
through the generations, finds its way through 
the labyrinthine mazes of a complex environ- 
ment, and reaches its destination only by a 
power which is equal to the details of infinity. 
Thousands, both now and hereafter, are re- 
lated to it ; and upon its observance their wel- 



94 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

fare largely depends. One may heed it or 
disregard it, as he chooses, — the conse- 
quences he cannot compute. 

III. 

Nor is it for man to decide what duties are 
great and what small. The seemingly insig- 
nificant duties, owing to the conditions re- 
lated to them, may prove to be vastly more 
deeply imbedded in the world's welfare than 
those which appear of greatest consequence 
to our limited vision. Nor does it suffice for 
those creatures of God who have a sense of 
duty to drift along through life as do those 
who have no such sense. The alligator lies 
basking in the sun, or floating on the water 
like a log, eating and sleeping, from the time 
of birth to the time of death. But that is 
the life of a reptile, and in living that sort of 
life it undoubtedly gives expression to all its 
faculties and powers. In human beings, 
however, there are many powers superadded 
to those of the reptile. The ability to think, 



DUTY. 95 

to remember, to foretell ; the ability to in- 
vent, and to venture beyond the limits of any 
known bounds of heredity, we find in the 
human creature. The " categorical impera- 
tive," or God's prayer to man, is forever his 
attendant. The human creature has the 
powers of both Gabriel and Lucifer. Both 
heaven and hell environ him, and he may 
listen to the voices of the angels of light, or 
to those of the angels of darkness. He does 
not know what the ultimate purpose of hu- 
man life may be. He may feel very sure 
regarding certain things which cannot con- 
tribute to that end, and he may have great 
confidence in certain tendencies which he 
believes flow toward the highest and best. 
He knows that the great Purpose of life is 
not best realized through theft, lying, fight- 
ing, gambling, self-abuse, and murder; nor 
through incontinence, cruelty, negligence, and 
irreverence. He knows this because, while 
his sense of duty has told him plainly to be 
honest, magnanimous, and pure, he has abso- 



96 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

lutely no faculty, inherited or acquired, which 
admonishes him to be the reverse. And this 
sense of duty, which will not be put off, 
making itself felt sometimes forcibly, some- 
times feebly, is the way the Eternal has of 
informing us what he wants done on earth ; 
and we have every reason for concluding that 
the sum-total of these very small duties which 
are dictated to us as individuals, in the infi- 
nite variety of our conditions, will culminate 
in the accomplishment of His Purpose. 

IV. 

This is one of the obvious results of simple 
monotheism. " I am God, and there is none 
like me." But so long as men believed that 
there were others like him, so long the merely 
human sense of duty signified very little. A 
sense of duty to do this or that might then 
be interpreted as the will of one god, against 
whom another god might come and reverse 
the line of duty. An infinite Intelligence in 
Unity is an absolutely necessary hypothesis 



DUTY. 97 

if we would have an adequate authority for 
righteousness. It is thus that we are ena- 
bled to believe that, so long as we heed His 
directions as they come to us from hour to 
hour, so long are we perfectly safe, and are 
bound to arrive, sooner or later, at the haven 
toward which the world is being piloted. 

V. 

And does one ask, How am I to recognize 
my duty ? Listen ! To him who listens con- 
scientiously the tongue of Duty is never dumb. 
If that voice be not stifled nor drowned 
in the babblings of selfishness, it must be 
heard. Too often does man turn away 
when the divine whisper is heard, and fool- 
ishly addresses some hapless spirit of Time. 
He easily holds out his hand to superficial 
Pride, who greets him with her conventional 
smile, and flatters him with her age-old com- 
pliments. He never thinks of asking her 
what his duty is. She does not wish him to 
consider real things. Her realm is that of 

7 



98 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

the unreal. She wishes him to consider what 
may be the easiest thing to do, or the pleas- 
antest; how he may live with fewest re- 
sponsibilities ; how he may pass through life 
without any heavy burdens ; how he may 
hoard (for who knows what ?) the paltry 
gleanings of avarice ; how he may find short 
cross-cuts into felicity, and by all sorts of 
intellectual jugglery avoid a meeting with 
Duty face to face. Duty is a divinity which 
will not sacrifice man's highest happiness to 
present pleasure. Other divinities will. They 
are short-sighted. They seek to make life 
pleasant now and to-day, without arousing a 
thought regarding the essential nature of 
human life. Such divinities, worshipped and 
grovelled before, will grant anything which 
Duty will not grant. And their slaves are 
legion. Why slaves ? Because, while they 
at first furnish the superficial pleasures of 
time and sense, — enough to eat; a pleasant, 
narrow, selfish, childless home ; opportunities 
to enjoy one's self, to be moral invalids far 



DUTY. 99 

into the age of manhood and womanhood, — 
they allow it all that they may the better 
fasten the manacles of a disgruntled, fruit- 
less, painful, hopeless maturity and old age 
upon their cringing victims. But Duty will 
not do this. Duty will callous the hands, 
painfully (through varied experience) expand 
the mind, bind one to-day that he may be 
released to-morrow; she will lead one 
through dark and dubious passages now that 
he may reach the light hereafter; she will 
furnish tasks innumerable, troubles sore, 
hardships and temptations many ; she will 
give him the cross that he may have where- 
with to gain the crown. Slaves in this life 
we shall be ; but to be a slave to Duty in the 
day of strength is to be a son of God, when 
the slaves of shallow Egotism and Pride are 
lingering in shame and weakness. Divine 
duties are not always pleasant. He who 
directly seeks the most comfortable thing, 
and the easiest and pleasantest career, is 
bound to reap dry leaves and the swine-husks 



100 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

of mistaken hopes. The greatest of all hu- 
man beings — the Messiahs of the world — 
have reaped eternal joy in the fields and 
vineyards of trial, where they have become 
men of sorrows and acquainted with grief, 
in the midst of burden-bearing and cross- 
carrying. 



M 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE KINGDOM COMING. 
I. 

AN feels to-day — it has been a com- 
mon sense now a score of years — 
what was felt at various periods in the his- 
tory of Israel ; what was, long before, felt in 
the Egyptian civilization ; what seemed to be 
diffused throughout the empires of Monte- 
zuma at, and just before, the coming of Cor- 
tez into the New World. It is a sense of 
coming events, casting all too often their 
shadows rather than their lights before. 
There is, all true prophets declare, a new 
" Dispensation " near at hand. Its forerun- 
ners are already on the field of action. 
Already a cry from Russia, from one wellnigh 
dressed in camel's hair and with a leathern 
girdle about his loins, is sent forth into 



102 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

the world, — a cry so penetrating, so fierce, 
so regardless of earthly consequences to his 
own name and fame, so loyal to Duty, that 
men of thought stand amazed, cease for a 
moment their Pharisaic quibbling, and grow 
serious and thoughtful while his voice is 
heard. He draws his pictures of Church and 
State and Society and Business in a great, 
bold, Herculean hand, and in their essential 
features the portraiture comes so near the 
convictions of honest men, that only a feeble 
applause is elicited. Our times are as critical 
of danger as they are pregnant with vast 
promises and possibilities. The traveller in 
the Brunig Pass beholds deep gulfs and dark 
ravines, as well as snow-covered, sunlit 
heights. And when one notes carefully the 
age in which mankind is now moving, he 
beholds on the one hand groaning, hollow 
caverns of yawning self-destruction, and on 
the other the possible mountain-tops of light 
and love. The former are known by the 
absence of a knowledge of and a fatal disre- 



THE KINGDOM COMING. 103 

gard for the fundamental, as distinguished 
from the superficial needs of human nature ; 
by an abandonment to a wrong theory of life 
and its proper objects ; by a stubborn blind- 
ness to what we are on earth for, and a blind- 
ness, too, to the self-imposed slavery in which 
a large part of the world is submerged. 
The latter are known by the prophecies, here 
and there, of a better time ; by the growing 
sense of mutual responsibility ; by the careful 
attention given by honest men to the voice of 
Duty ; and by the longing which many have 
to come down to a simple, truthful, childlike, 
faithful, and sympathetic plane of living, as 
distinguished from that of perturbation and 
strife, as now predominant. That better 
time must come by man's endeavor to answer 
the prayers of God ; by man's attentive heed, 
without any thought as to what is easiest, or 
as to what is most commanding, or as to 
what is most pleasurable, to the voice of Duty 
as it is heard by the individual. 



104 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

II. 

Herein is the revelation of the New Life, 
— the Scriptures of the New Dispensation. 
They consist in the sum-total of the revela- 
tions of duty given to the individual souls 
of men. Does one ask how he is to recognize 
those Scriptures ? Just as one recognizes 
the personal revelation from the Bible, from 
Homer, from Plutarch, from Shakspeare, — 
that in them which appeals to and is related 
to the personal experience. Not everything 
in the Testaments, not everything in history, 
is applicable to the needs of a given individ- 
ual, but that part which fits into the vacant 
places of his life. So it is with the Scriptures 
of the New Dispensation. They are now 
being compiled, as were the Hebrew writings, 
by the flowing into them of myriads of human 
elements, wrung from the hearts of myriads 
who recognize God working in the affairs 
of men. Therefore, if one would know and 
profit by those scriptures, he must be atten- 



THE KINGDOM COMING. 105 

tive to the Yoice which utters them, the voice 
of Duty, — God's prayer to Man. Such rev- 
elations, and such alone, are divinely inspired. 
Every individual duty is related to every other 
individual duty under the sun. And only 
that Power which is able to comprehend the 
infinite complexity of vital forces can dictate 
to individuals, as individuals, the special lines 
of true progress. That such lines are clearly 
indicated to men and women the world over, 
is evidence that the Revelations of Time are 
gradually being unfolded for the salvation 
of the world. 



CHAPTER XT. 

TRUTH : TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT. 
I. 

T3UT is the earnest seeker after truth still 
•*-' puzzled as he recalls the errors and the 
false doctrines upon which generations have 
subsisted, thinking the while that they were 
living by " every word which proceedeth out 
of the mouth of God " ? Does he cry pain- 
fully, that what may come to him as the very 
revelation of heaven, may also prove in time 
to be " as the morning cloud, and as the dew 
that passeth early away ; as the chaff that is 
driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing- 
floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney " ? 
This is a natural inquiry for one who beholds 
so much which is passing away, which was 
once adhered to as such vital truth that the 
stake and the rack and perpetual imprison- 



TRUTH : TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT. 107 

ment were cheerfully endured rather than its 
surrender or denial. Especially is this true 
regarding many of the deliveries of Christian 
theology. Beliefs that our fathers thought 
should be embraced with all the devotion of 
the human heart, upon which the eternal 
welfare of the race was supposed to depend, 
have passed out of the practical creeds of 
to-day, and bear no relation to the methods 
of modern prosperity. If they are retained 
at all by thoughtful adherents of the Church, 
their original content has long since been dis- 
placed by new interpretations, or entirely 
reasoned away. They remind one of the ruins 
of feudal castles, once so famous, so fruit- 
ful of heroism and romance, so lofty on their 
perches above the troubled sea, so attractive 
to the novelist and poet ; but now, in the light 
of modern engineering, so frail, shrunken, 
unwholesome, and even pitiable. The entire 
age within which they rose to the dignity and 
grandeur of a noble heraldry has passed away. 
And it is largely so with the central dogmas 



108 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

of mediaeval theology which composed the 
intellectual feudalism of Christian history. 
How proudly has the Church and her sub- 
divisions stood in the royalty of Infallibility, 
referring to her Ecumenical Councils as to so 
many memorable tournaments where all the 
differences of human opinion were forever 
settled ! How earnestly they were fought 
out, with what tenacity were they defended, 
and with what heroism were they assaulted ! 
And now behold, mankind survives, and the 
very doctrines over which so much erudition, 
eloquence, and wrath were enlisted have, for 
the . most part, become mere tiresome formu- 
las with scarcely a sign of their old-time 
vitality. They have vanished from the prac- 
tical concerns of the present day ; and beside 
the mighty revelations of modern science they 
are little else but crumbled ruins, — pictur- 
esque perhaps, but typical of a world which, 
beside that of to-day, is small, shrunken, and 
feeble beyond the telling. Nominally, they 
are still held by many Christian institutions, 



truth: transient and permanent. 109 

but much as ancient ruins are preserved, — 
because they are the symbols of the strifes, 
the convictions, the trials and tears and mar- 
tyrdoms of the past. They no longer awaken 
the spirit of heroism, save in the breast of 
some Don Quixote who so far forgets himself 
as to mistake the centurv in which he lives. 
They no longer breed a race of Crusaders, 
nor that spirit which once sent strong men 
to the dungeon. 

II. 

These considerations may well lead the 
puzzled seeker after truth to ask if anything 
wrought out of the human mind is abiding. 
He exclaims that a like fate may await the 
fondest conceptions of his own intellect. And 
if so, why need he connect them with his 
sense of duty, and project them into the 
world with a plea for their reception ? "When 
the next generation comes upon the scene, 
will not all these religious beliefs, by which 
we now set such store, be cast aside, super- 



110 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

seded or transcended ? And if this be so, 
wherefore seek after the thing we call 
Truth ? Why not acknowledge at once that 
we are the dupes of intellectual delusions, and 
prepare as best we can to become extinct ? 

Only a moment's careful thought is re- 
quired, however, to observe that not every- 
thing which is wrought out by the human 
mind coming in contact with the forces about 
it, passes away like the morning cloud. Many 
of the great truths which the world has held, 
at least intellectually, are not transient, but 
as fresh and glorious as the sunlight, rising 
periodically as the sun rises upon a waiting 
world, or shining perpetually in the con- 
sciousness of man to direct his steps in the 
paths of righteousness. They are the same 
in all times and places. No change of cus- 
tom will ever subvert the Beatitudes ; no reve- 
lation of science shall ever disturb the serene 
and princely supremacy of the two great com- 
mandments and the Golden Rule ; no discov- 
ery and no invention can ever supersede or 



truth: transient and permanent. Ill 

transcend the Fatherhood of God and the 
Brotherhood of man, — a doctrine which is 
not the creation of any Council, but the re- 
sult of human experience, intelligible to every 
race. The Christian centuries have furnished 
us with innumerable practical truths just as 
abiding as these; and other centuries and 
nations not Christian have also contributed 
to the working wisdom of the world. The 
names of Aurelius, Cicero, Seneca, and Plu- 
tarch, and a host before and after, have left 
us storehouses of enduring thought which 
Time scarcely diminishes. And Thomas a 
Kempis and Luther and Melanchthon and 
Eousseau merely suggest an endless list of 
strong and faithful men whose influence in 
the interests of abiding truth does not wane. 
But no enduring monument is ever built 
without a superficial structure. There must 
always be the provisional scaffoldings, — they 
are absolutely necessary, but transient as 
the cloud. Many spikes must be driven 
where nothing is to remain. Great timbers 



112 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

must be raised, and thought and strength 
employed, only to be demolished within a 
brief time. And all this must be done in 
order that the true structure may be builded. 
The solid walls of the enduring edifice will 
remain, but the stagings — often imposing in 
themselves — must soon be removed. 

Is it not so in history 5 in the realm of man's 
intellectual life ? Sometimes it appears like 
a great waste of energy, this construction of 
innumerable local, provisional, and altogether 
superficial beliefs and opinions. And yet 
that which is permanent in human thought 
is made possible by what is transient. The 
transient is and has always been necessary to 
the recognition, not to say the production, of 
the permanent. We have but to recall the 
well-nigh interminable quibblings of the Jew- 
ish Gemara, to see that the great general- 
izations which Jesus finally submitted to 
mankind arose in the midst of a colossal 
accumulation of temporary intellectual re- 
sults. The immortal spirit must have its 



truth: transient and permanent. 113 

clay; so the great principles of religion and 
the spiritual life must have their corruptible 
husks. If our fathers had not mixed mortar 
in beds that were soon to be thrown away ; if 
they had not spent many a monotonous cen- 
tury in constructing the crazy landings on 
which the master workman could stand ; and 
if millions had not thought it honorable just 
to carry the bricks and other small mate- 
rials of the structure, this proud nineteenth 
century could not have had its palaces of 
learning and achievement. 

Therefore the earnest seeker after truth 
need not be disheartened by the consideration 
that his minor beliefs may sometime pass out 
of the working creeds of the world. It is im- 
possible in one's own time to discriminate 
fully what is to remain and what is to vanish. 
But if each man is honest and also progres- 
sive, the question which concerns him most 
will not be one of absolute truth, but a ques- 
tion of need. He must grasp the thing his 
nature craves in order to have satisfaction. 

8 



114 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

It is the way of the Eternal to fill us with 
many desires, — to give us hunger that we 
may eat and live ; to give us thirst that we 
may drink ; to give us ennui that we may be- 
stir ourselves to active interests ; to give us 
passion that the race may be continued ; to 
give us the longings that arise from grief and 
sickness and disappointment that we may 
have, and be able to extend to others, the 
anchor of hope and the balm of comfort. 
The aggregate of individual cravings ensures 
what is permanent. It is the duty of each to 
be true to himself, — to seek that which he 
needs. It may be only a provisional truth 
which will do him the greatest possible ser- 
vice now ; but that provisional truth is for the 
time being absolute to him, and it will enable 
him to reach that which is universally abso- 
lute. " No chain is stronger than its weakest 
link ; " so with one hour dropped out of life, 
life itself is broken ; or one truth rejected, and 
the continuity of our intellectual progress is 
destroyed. If only man is true to himself at 



truth: transient and permanent. 115 

any given time, honestly and earnestly appro- 
priating that which his soul most eagerly 
craves, he will be led into all knowledge and 
all mystery, and fulfil the law of his being. 
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and 
ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened 
unto you ; for every one that asketh, receiv- 
eth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him 
that knocketh it shall be opened." " Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

man's stewardship. 

A ND Truth, as we honestly hold it, is to 
•* -^ be thrown into the world. Men are set 
as stewards over certain small demesnes of 
life containing physical, mental, moral, and 
spiritual capabilities, all controlled by the 
self-same Spirit. It is for him to care for and 
develop the estate, and cause it to yield fruit 
for himself and the Lord of all. It is not for 
him so much to calculate results as it is to 
provide for them. Jesus described a sower 
who went forth to sow. The seed fell here 
and there, but the sower is not represented 
as officiously watching where each kernel fell, 
to see whether it would drop on the proper 
kind of soil. It was his concern to sow liber- 
ally of the seed. Some of it fell on the high- 
way, some of it on the rocks, some of it 



man's stewardship. 117 

among thorns ; and only a very small propor- 
tion of it found the conditions where sun and 
soil and moisture enabled it to yield its multi- 
fold of grain. The sower is not portrayed as 
one of the exceedingly careful people of the 
world who are not disposed to do anything 
unless they can anticipate to a certainty a 
definite returning bounty. The great em- 
phasis of the Parable of the Sower lies in its 
teaching of abandonment to the immediate 
task before him, and not in the anticipation 
of the harvest. Spiritual rewards can never 
be predicted with that exactness with which 
the financier computes his dividends. For 
the manipulation of " affairs " we have to 
rely largely upon logical processes of thought ; 
but when we come to the realm of spiritual 
force, our nice logical distinctions are very 
apt to prove of slight value. The soul is not 
dependent upon the syllogism. The forces 
we deal with are so multitudinous, and the 
results are of such a complex character, that 
one becomes utterly bewildered who endeav- 



118 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

ors to reckon beforehand the profits of well- 
doing. We are tempted to say in spiritual 
things, as in things material, that seed thrown 
upon shallow soil will amount to nothing, and 
so withhold our hand. Experience, however, 
teaches that man has no power to determine 
what soil is shallow and what is deep. The 
most astonishing wealth of spiritual life often 
arises where we had least expected it; and 
where we had looked for the most glorious 
manifestations of the divine, we are often 
equally astonished to find none. Truth, such 
as we honestly hold, is to be thrown into the 
world, wherever opportunity arises. God, in 
His prayers of Conscience and the sense of 
Duty, urges us to do with what we have. He 
reserves the right and the power of bringing 
forth the fruit of what is done by us. We 
may provide food and seek fresh air ; but He 
attends to the assimilation of that food, and 
the operation of breathing. So it is for us 
to seek truth and cast it into the world ; He 
will attend to its germination or to its disso- 



man's stewardship. 119 

lution, as He sees fit. It is by the acquisition 
and distribution of truth and aspiration that 
we are carried toward the second Eden. And, 
as by grasping with his wings and casting 
away the air in which he moves, the dove is 
borne to the uttermost parts of the earth, so 
it is by the rhythmical oscillation of our spir- 
itual pinions that we are carried to the gate 
of heaven. " Whisper not to thy own heart," 
said Carlyle, " how worthy is this action ; for 
then it is already become worthless. The 
good man is he who works continually in 
well-doing, — to whom well-doing is as his 
natural existence, awakening no astonish- 
ment, requiring no commentary, but there 
like a thing of course, and as if it could not 
but be so." This concentration of the human 
mind upon the thought of future rewards and 
punishments has often been a positive hin- 
drance to the cultivation of spiritual powers. 
It implies that we are separated from and 
independent of the Life of all, and are there- 
fore to be exactly compensated for the good 



120 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

we do, and exactly punished for the evil we 
commit. But no standard has ever been given 
whereby human judgment is supported in its 
decrees of good and evil. Our good may not 
be so good as we think, and our evil may be 
turned to more profit than our good. The 
true steward is simply faithful. He labors 
conscientiously, answers the prayers of his 
Lord, and asks not, Wherefore those prayers ? 
It may be possible, for aught we know, for 
the Eternal to teach his truths by means of 
our errors ; but it is the verdict of all noble 
living that it is much easier for him to im- 
part his truths by means of our integrity. It 
is our business to be faithful to the Eternal ; 
to do his will as we understand it, and to 
grasp such truth as we can comprehend and 
transmit to other generations, and leave the 
matter of reward to him. Melchisedek left no 
annals, Homer no biography, Jesus no com- 
mentary, Shakspeare no personal reminiscence. 
Their very greatness consisted in their free- 
dom from S6?(f-assertion, and their absorption 



man's stewardship. 121 

in the work of life. They stood to transmit 
what came to them, to cast their seed, to 
throw it away. Surely " I of myself can do 
nothing ; but the Father that worketh in me." 
As individual men they are scarcely more than 
myths and fictions ; but as stewards they are 
the mightiest forces of civilization. And in 
what way did they furnish us glimpses of the 
better life ? 



CHAPTER XVIL 

THE DIVINE INTEGRITY. 

TV /T OST of all, the world's great stewards 
-L»-A- have given us clear glimpses of the 
integrity of the universe. And they were able 
so to do because they themselves, standing 
near the Life of all, were made to assume 
(without question) the indestructibility of life. 
We read their thoughts, and those thoughts in- 
troduce us to what is grandest in ourselves. 
With skill they unlock the vast temples of be- 
lief and hope, of which we are the doors. At 
the hands of Isaiah we are admitted into realms 
of righteousness and peace ; at the hands of 
Jesus we are ushered into the Father's house ; 
at the hands of the master-dramatist we look 
upon the remorse, the vengeance, the burning 
love, the relentless shame, and cruel hate, and 
all the longings, hopes, and assurances of the 
human heart. And yet all these things were 



THE DIVINE INTEGRITY. 123 

in ourselves, unknown to us until revealed by 
them. Few among men could stand at the 
entrance of Life and reveal these things, 
— only those who had a superlative faith. 
They could look, like the eagle, upon what 
would dazzle or fill with terror the ordinary 
spectator; they could handle Despair as a 
child would play with a toy ; they could abide 
with the sorrows and woes of our existence 
and not be cast down ; they could deal with 
Love and Passion, — those forces that enchant, 
that torture and consume, that twist and knot 
our temples in indescribable suffering, — they 
could present to the world their intensest 
phases, and not lose their rapture in the glow 
of life. They are of the few to whom both 
heaven and hell opened, for they lead us into 
the wildest storms that drive men to suicide ; 
into Gehennas of sin, misery, sensuality, and 
death, and into the loftiest regions of spiri- 
tual aspiration and trust. And while they 
place our fingers on the sinews of Death and 
bid us lie down in the grave, by virtue of 



124 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

their perfect freedom with these hideous 
forms the j prove to us that, beyond the 
crimes that man enacts before his own con- 
science, these things have no substance and 
no reality. Their confidence in the integrity 
of the universe is so great that they could 
mingle with life's greatest terrors without 
being terrified, — as if it had never occurred 
to them that in God's world there had ever 
been occasion to be afraid. 

It is therefore for one to build cities, for 
another to train minds, for another to make 
a home, for another to care for the poor and 
wretched, — all to work with God, one no 
greater than another in the Father's house, 
all working with His voice to guide, all happy 
in the one sufficient thought that " all things 
work together for good to them that love 
God." His forces play upon us, give us the 
warmth of love, the gladness of light, the 
freedom of hope, and the certainty of never 
drifting beyond His power to draw us to 
Himself. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE INEVITABLE FAITH. 



1 ^AITH is the foundation of all belief. It 
-"- is a necessity of thought. It is alike 
true of the Scientist and the Priest, the Theist 
and the Atheist, the Gnostic and the Agnos- 
tic. Some acknowledge and some denv its 
presence, but it is nevertheless the basis of 
all opinion, whether hidden or revealed. The 
physical scientist takes his refuge in obser- 
vation, but he must have faith in the integrity 
of his powers of observation ; or he bases his 
great doctrines upon the Atomic Theory, or 
the theory of a Luminiferous Ether, either of 
which is, in the last analysis, an intellectual 
absurdity. The agnostic paints his grand scen- 
ery of Life ; but his canvas is the " Unknown 
and Unknowable " in which he places implicit 



126 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

faith, as being a background which will al- 
ways and everywhere receive his pigments. 
The evolutionist assumes his First Cause, and 
the materialist his Mind-Stuff, just as the 
geometrician does his Axioms. " Faith is 
the substance of things hoped for and the 
conviction of things not seen." Wherever^ 
therefore, there is a " conviction of things not 
seen " (and in the realm of man's intellectual 
life we find it to be a universal condition) 
there is Faith. Its ultimate object has many 
names, according to that particular phase of 
Truth upon which the believer gazes ; but it is 
always and everywhere the self-same Reality 
which in spiritual language we call God. 
Thus, an able student of Life has declared : — 

" We cannot think far in any direction without 
coming upon that which is more than all our 
knowledge, — something that is and must be in 
itself unknown, not because it is uncertain, but 
because it is far too real for our superficial facul- 
ties. We cannot mark phenomena without think- 
ing of substance. We cannot admire the ordered 



THE INEVITABLE FAITH. 127 

system of the universe without aspiring in imagi- 
nation to law above law, until at the topmost height 
one inconceivable stream of force springs into a 
myriad channels of harmonious action. We can- 
not feel the world's heart beat in the ceaseless 
energy of living things without adoring an all- 
pervading Life. Yet substance, law, power, and 
life are only names of the unutterable, — the last 
murmur upon the lip when different paths of 
knowledge open on those measureless con- 
templations which command the worship of 
silence.' , x 

II. 

" A mighty Hand, from an exhaustless Urn 
Pours forth the never-ending Flood of Years." 

The sense oppresses him of something 
against which man cannot prevail, so great 
its protecting care ; of some Power in whose 
enduring grasp all lives are held ; of stars 
obedient to an unseen Will ; of an infinite 
flood of circumstance which sweeps all before 
it, — past the early days, the ravishments of his 

1 J. Allanson Picton in Mystery of Matter, pp. 127, 128. 



128 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

first burning love ; past homes on earth whose 
inmates call out through the tumult of expe- 
rience ; past friends, children, parents, down 
the quick years ! Then he cries, — 

" O thou great movement of the Universe, 
Or change, or Flight of Time — for ye are one ! 
That bearest silently this visible scene 
Into night's shadow and the streaming rays 
Of starlight, whither art thou bearing me?" 

Then spiritual Faith arises to lead him to 
the place of Rest. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE EDEN OF THE SOUL. 
I. 

r I ^HE place of Rest is the state of spiritual 
-*■ tranquillity. It is realized when we feel 
at home in God's world. It is where, under 
the inspiration of loving adoration, man brings 
every wayward, cruel, destructive, and vicious 
tendency into subjection to the will of God. 
On his way he encounters many temptations, 
many sorrows, many conflicts, much remorse 
and shame ; he climbs and falls, climbs and 
falls again, in days of toil and nights of 
anguish, until the burden of every prayer and 
the essence of every desire is rest. The wise 
parent thus reads the future of his children, 
which is but the reflection of his own past, — 
toil is to dog their steps; the lack of bread 



130 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

will cause them to stumble and faint and 
fall. Their faces, always the same in a 
parent's eyes, will be stained with tears and 
creased with suffering ; their hands will be 
lifted up for help. In the midst of their 
later joys they will catch swift glimpses of a 
more joyous past that they once knew, and 
hope will be deferred and the heart made 
sick. This, he knows, is the common lot of 
the generations. Therefore, as long as hu- 
man beings are here subject to hard work, 
disease, and bereavement, they must seek, if 
haply they may find, the place of rest, — of 
spiritual tranquillity. In a world which 
stretches, as does this, between two Edens, 
man must have the kingdom of God within 
him, else he cannot know the blessing of 
true peace. So a prayer for rest becomes 
universal. It was the Nirvana of the Bud- 
dhist, the goal toward which the prophets and 
psalmists of the Old Testament set their gaze, 
and the promise of the Son of Man. "My 
presence shall go with thee, and I will give 



THE EDEN OF THE SOUL. 131 

thee rest." " There the wicked cease from 
troubling ; there the weary be at rest." " Oh, 
that I had the wings of a dove ! Then would 
I fly away and be at rest." "Return unto 
thy rest, my soul ; for the Lord hath dealt 
bountifully with thee." These are but a few 
of the instances where the great spirits of 
Israel expressed the universal longing. And 
when Jesus cried, " Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest," he simply bespoke the last and pro- 
foundest prayer of the struggling and aspir- 
ing soul of man, after it has fought the good 
fight of the faith. 

"Father, the shadows fall 
Along my way ; 
'T is past the noon of day. 
My ' westering sun ' tells that the eve is near 
I know, but feel no fear. 
And loved ones have gone home, 

A holy band : 
I hear them call me from the spirit-land, — 

A gentle call. 
Yes, dear ones, I shall come. 



132 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

" Oh, not alone ! though now 

I lead the van, 
And with uncovered head 
Press on where others led 

When my young life began. 
I am not left alone, 
Though they are gone : 
Sweet voices of the past, 

And of to-day, — 
The loved, that round my way 
Still twine about my heart, 
Tell me how good thou art. 

O holy Light and Love, 
Beam on my soul, 
My inmost life control : 
Then may each pure thought spring; 
And peace, with gentle wing, 

Brood like the dove." 

II. 

" There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest 
for the people of God." Not, to be sure, the 
rest of inactivity and total passivity, as our 
fathers may have dreamed ; but the rest 
which comes from that fulness of life which 
knows no weariness, that culmination of trust 
which allows no doubt. Behold ! the week 



THE EDEN OF THE SOUL. 133 

of toil is over [ The spirit of man looks 
forward to conditions of felicity which this 
life was never intended to afford. Here is 
the place of birth, the place of doubt, of pain, 
of mental agony ; it is the place where one 
generation labors that another generation 
may come forth, and the endless succession 
of human beings be thus continued forever. 
And what real happiness comes, what joy, 
what gladness in the cup of life, is incidental 
to the main issue and is the fruit of spiritual 
transcendency over opposing forces ! Inci- 
dental also to the rough conflict which man 
wages against the elements of dissolution is 
this glimpse of the " bliss beyond compare " 
which he knows to be the natural dower of 
the human soul. Forward then, the week of 
toil being over, he sets his gaze. All is fresh 
with the glad premonitions of the coming 
daybreak, which is soon to steal over the 
darkness of the life of sense. He casts away 
all those vexatious cabals into which his in- 
tellect once plunged with resistless impetu- 



134 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

osity. Questions which once absorbed all the 
energies of his mind and gave to his mental 
life that exhilaration which it once needed 
for its devotion to duty, he now regards as 
the toys and playthings of spiritual infancy. 
His sorrows annoy him no longer, for they 
have been his mysterious angels in disguise, — 
entertained against his will, that he might 
find the place of rest and be at home with Gfod. 
Passion is over, hate is done away, doubt 
disappears, fear has fled ; the aches and pangs 
of remorse have served their purpose, and are 
no more. He has struggled for immediate 
ends within his range of vision, but now sees 
that he really labored for ends that lay beyond 
the reach of his imagination. He was led by 
a way that he knew not, but thought he knew. 
And so he has proved his soul while he 
imagined that he was only caring for his body. 
All things have conspired to lead him ; the 
child-faces, the sweet homes, the vistas of 
youthful romance, memories brought forward 
into after years, the admonitions of con- 



THE EDEN OF THE SOUL. 135 

science, the appeals of nature and of art, the 
charms of music, the sense of responsibility, 
the yearnings for knowledge, the disgust of 
satiety, the anguish of grief, and the gleams 
of hope, — all have conspired to lead him to 
this "sabbath rest." 'And now, blessed as- 
surance ! he is no longer an outcast, no 
longer a wanderer over the rough plain, no 
longer a seeker after the light, for the Light 
bursts upon the near horizon. In his fulness 
of gratitude he cries, — 

" I have nought to fear — the darkness is the shadow 

of Thy wing, 
Beneath it I am almost sacred ; here can come no evil 

thing. 
Oh, I seem to stand trembling where foot of mortal 

ne'er hath been, 
Wrapped in the radiance of Thy sinless land which eye 

hath never seen. 
In a purer clime my being fills with rapture ; waves of 

thought 
Roll in upon my spirit; strains sublime break over me 

unsought." 

Then swells the refrain " I am the resur- 
rection and the life." I live ! I live ! The 



136 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 

life that is I is God ! I am from the begin- 
ning, and knew it not! I am unto the end, 
and knew it not ! " The desert blossoms as 
the rose ! " " The wilderness and the solitary 
place are glad." The way I came is a way of 
triumph. I came, I wrought the works of 
Him that sent me, I go to my Father's house 
of many mansions. No tomb so strong, no 
stone so great, no wounds so deep, no Time 
so long, but over all and through all and in 
all I now see the Spirit of all, — God ! And 
God is Love. 



THE END. 



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